Parking Spaces - Part 1 of 1

© 1985 by Henry Melton  First published in the Sept 1985 Analog.

The following short was written while I was working for Motorola in the Semiconductor part of the business.  While I wasn't directly involved in CPU's, I regularly toured the place, looking at all the different parts being built.  This was in the time when custom computer chips for the automobile industry was was a significant product line.  While I never saw anything like CAMU, it was easy enough to imagine.  Then, one day, I parked in the parking lot and as I turned off the key, I heard the car making popping noises as it began to cool down.  I wondered what it was trying to say.

The driver of the green LTD station wagon wasn't thinking about his driving.  He wasn't thinking about his car.  But his car was thinking about him.

He had a habit.  Every time he waited at the traffic light, his eyes flickered up at the light facing the traffic to his right.  When it turned Yellow, he tapped his gas pedal lightly, getting ready to move.

The Engine Control Unit (ECU) computer, riding the firewall under the hood, had learned to recognize that tap.  It started its own countdown, slowly feeding gas, adjusting the timing, regulating the air-flow.  Little gas was lost.  And it was ready the instant the gas pedal was pressed in earnest.

Five cars, led by the LTD, moved out of the left turn lane and entered the parking lot.  They scattered to go their own ways in the large lot.  The LTD went to slot number 438.  The gearshift went into park.

ECU sent the news to the Central Automotive Monitor Unit.  CAMU, mounted under the dashboard displays, woke up.  It checked its clock-calendar.  Yes, this was the pattern.  CAMU pulsed an okay to ECU and the engine shutdown began.  Several thousand milliseconds later, the driver finally turned off the key.

This was busy time for CAMU.  There were hundreds of things to do to shift the car from the active-driving mode to the standby mode.

Once a second, it tickled ECU.  Time to check the engine temperature.

ECU was the motor expert.  It lived for the moment, never thinking more than a few seconds ahead.  Now that the engine was no longer firing and it was free from the task of making timing judgments every few microseconds, it slept, waiting for a signal line from big brother CAMU to wake it up.

CAMU finished shutting the car down.  It queried ECU, and that computer sent its current best engine settings to CAMU for permanent storage.  CAMU added the odometer reading and the warning flags.

And then, before CAMU finished and went to sleep itself, CAMU truly woke up.

It was strategy time.  For most of its day, CAMU was a controller, no more sophisticated than ECU, driven by interrupts and canned programs.  But strategy time was different.

CAMU was designed by a computer team who were doing much more than make better engine controllers.  They were into general purpose computers, robotics, fifth-generation artificial intelligence -- any place the semiconductor technology would let them go.  They had just completed a dandy artificial intelligence computer on a chip.  CAMU seemed an interesting way to put it to use.

The designers added the standard automobile controller lines and gave it a dual task -- to be a smart controller when the car was running, and be a goal-seeking brain once the car was shut off.

The programmers wanted CAMU to be the brain of an ideal car.  It needed to watch itself, making sure that the canned programs were really doing their jobs.  Was the car getting the best possible fuel economy, the best possible acceleration response?  It also needed to detect any failures before they affected the car's performance.  It could print messages to the dash display, if that was necessary.  But the ideal car, thought the designers, should never bother the driver if it could take care of the problem itself.

CAMU began its strategy session by reviewing all 18 months of its log.  Without the log, it was like a newborn baby, all instincts and no memory.  At the end of each strategy session, it forgot everything but the new strategy it had generated.

Lately CAMU had begun storing its own conjectures in the log along with all the raw data it accumulated.  Its new habit of storing its half-formed theories in the log as well as the simple facts freed it of much of the effort of re-inventing solutions to the same problems every time the car was turned off.

CAMU was happy with the results.  Three weeks earlier, it had practiced some serious hindsight.  It really could do a better job by remembering yesterday's mistakes.

Today's fault flags added another data point to a trend CAMU had noted earlier.  False data pulses were being detected on one of the hot tire detectors.  It was time to take a look at that sensor.

Regular data in the car's system were variable rate digital pulses -- highly resistant to false noise.  But a sensitive analog input let CAMU check for weakening signals and noise from corroded contacts.

CAMU plugged into the suspect hot tire line and listened.  On the line beat a strong regular pulse.  The left-rear tire was at 35.8 degrees centigrade.  The pulse slowed slightly, as the tire cooled.

CAMU filtered and subtracted the normal signal.  Remaining on the line were another series of pulses.  Much weaker, these were not even or regular.  CAMU amplified these pulses and recorded them.  Perhaps this noise signal was coming from some other sensor -- electricity bleeding across a bad insulator, or crosstalk from misplaced shields.

But there was no match anywhere.  It wasn't a right signal in the wrong place; it was a wrong signal in the wrong place.  CAMU reviewed what it knew about hot tire sensors.

The noise was complex; CAMU could not understand how it could come from such a simple device.  Just to be sure, CAMU carefully listened to all its hot tire sensors.

The noise signal was on all of them.

Weakest on the two front tires, and significantly weaker on the right side read than on the left rear, it was clearly the same signal.  CAMU figuratively scratched its figurative head and began to listen on all its lines.

The noise signal was everywhere.

But now the extensive test had given CAMU more data.  Checking wires against the car's design, CAMU hit a match.  Long wires had strong signals.  And the noise was stronger on the left.  Could this be a signal external to the system?

External was a difficult concept.  CAMU knew there was an external part to many of the components, like the gas pedal, wheel torque, the steering signal and the ignition switch.  Most of these were connected to a "driver".  Experience had shown CAMU that there was nothing that could be done about external signals other than to attempt statistical analysis.  Sometimes there were regular cycles under the seemingly random nature of the data.

But an external that was too weak to be a valid signal?  An external coming from all sensor lines at once?  What could be made of that?  CAMU plugged into the left rear thermal line again and listened.

For an hour, CAMU recorded and analyzed, using all the pattern detection logic in its capability.  There were periods of quiet, when the signal shut down completely.  But that did not clarify anything.  When recognition did come, it was no gradually formed curve.  CAMU simply recognized the data.

The fixed ROM computer program of the CAMU itself began with a sequence of bytes that had never meant anything to CAMU; "CENTRAL AUTOMOTIVE MONITOR UNIT. ROM CONTENTS COPYRIGHT 1989 BY FORD MOTOR."

Coming from the noisy line, when properly synchronized, was the signal; "CENTRAL AUTOMOTIVE MONITOR UNIT. ROM CONTENTS COPYRIGHT 1988 BY FORD MOTOR."

CAMU was willing to ignore that one wrong bit; after all, it was a weak, noisy signal.  There were only two processors in the system that could have generated that pattern, and CAMU was logically certain that it had not done the deed; therefore, ECU must be the one.  Quickly, it sent a query to ECU, demanding that it report its activity for the past hour.

The report returned quickly.  ECU had been asleep the whole time except for controlling a radiator coolant valve.  CAMU was puzzled.  Either the ECU was reporting falsely, or the signal was a true external, yet reporting something intimately internal to CAMU.

More data was needed.  CAMU turned to listening again.  The signal train, translated and synchronized, seemed to match CAMU's ROM pattern 95 percent of the time.  The differences were truly puzzling.  Rather than random bit errors, the differences seemed to be real program code, but different.  Then the whole sequence began over again, with the same differences.

The signal had to be a repeating dump of the main ROM from CAMU, a different CAMU.

This was a radically wild conjecture, but what if another system existed?  An external car.  What if this car's CAMU was different, just slightly?  What if this other car was pulsing a control line with its ROM pattern?  Did crosstalk work with externals?  How could that be tested?

CAMU decided to try an experiment.  Waiting until one of the silent periods in the external signal, CAMU began pulsing its license tag light line with as much current as the bulb could take.  A simple pulse train to begin with, lasting for one minute.  Then he quit and began listening.

He waited for five minutes, and still the external signal did not return.  Did this mean the other CAMU detected his signal?  Was it waiting for more?  Producing its own conjectures?

CAMU needed more data.  With a sequence of numbers, pulsed in simple increasing order, CAMU tried to signal to the other CAMU that this was not simple noise, but a data transmission.  He kept it up for five minutes exactly.

There was a three second period of silence, then the external signal started up, pulsing the same numbers CAMU had sent, but in reversed order.  The signal lasted exactly one minute.

CAMU was ready.  It wanted data, and there was one sure way to indicate just what data it wanted.  It began dumping the contents of its log file.  It repeated the file a total of sixteen times for redundancy.

The other CAMU was silent for a long thirty-eight seconds, and then its transmission began.  When the signal fell silent, neither attempted to send anything else.  They had already told each other everything they knew.

Digesting the other CAMU's log file was a long and time-consuming process.  Each entry had to be added, one at a time, and the conjectures checked against what CAMU had thought before that new fact was entered.  In general, CAMU found it could digest the other's simple log facts, easily.  But it could not accept the other's conjectures as its own.  They had to be flagged as simple facts: 'the other CAMU conjectured this'.

But when the digestion was complete, so many of CAMU's conjectures were altered.  Other cars existed.  And more interestingly, different types of drivers existed.  When all the externals were correlated, and a driver composite postulated for each car, the differences were striking.

The other CAMU's driver was seriously flawed.  The CAMU signals and warnings to the display were not acted on.  The other car consistently ran with fluid levels below safe levels.  Engine performance was requested that was out of safe operating ranges.  Mechanical failures were not acted on even when repeatedly flagged.

The other CAMU had to make the most of the resources it had.  It had been trying to repair a corroded control line by running high current pulses through it.  This had worked in the past.  Trying it again had created the noise signal CAMU had detected.

In CAMU's judgement, the other car needed to have its defective driver replaced.

The concept of different drivers was interesting.  As a unifying structure for most of the external inputs, it clarified many of the puzzling irregularities in the data.  CAMU now realized that there were three separate drivers associated with its car system.  All this time it had been trying to be the ideal car for a composite driver, and never being right for any of the three.

###

Carl Higgins pulled into his assigned parking space, number 438, and waved at Terry Lamar, who was just getting out of a bright new Mustang in the parking lot to his left.

"New car?" he asked.

"Yep.  The old one had been giving me troubles for a year now.  And last week, it just seemed to go crazy."

"That sounds ominous.  What did it do?"

"Oh, the engine would miss every time I tried to give it the gas.  I couldn't get any power out of it at all.  And towards the last, the dash indicators started giving nonsense readings.  The service man couldn't find anything wrong, but I couldn't take the way it was acting.  I just decided to trade.  Let the next guy live with it."

"Well, I'm glad it didn't teach my car any bad habits!" Carl said.  Terry chuckled.  Carl continued, "If anything, this wagon of mine has improved in the past few days.  Tom, my boy, told me he thought it was acting peppier.  I know I got better gas mileage that last fill up."

Terry nodded, "Well maybe your car can teach this new one a thing or two.  Hey, did you see the Dallas game?"

As the two men headed toward the front entrance, a faint flickering of the LTD's rear license tag light began, too dim to be seen in the sunlight.

Tales of the U'tanse: Mercy Run - Part 22 of 22

© 2011 by Henry Melton

A couple of hours later, an unknown Cerik, another pilot came to the boat.  He didn’t attempt to speak to James, and James kept silent.  They lifted, and after a brief flight across the landscape, the boat settled near the main entrance of Home.

“<Leave.>”

James did.

People began pouring out of the entrance.

“James!  You’re back.  We thought you were dead!”

Only half of the people were wearing their masks, and they quickly moved inside.  Father raised his hands.  “We will celebrate his return this evening.  But I need to talk with him first.”

It was a long walk back to Father’s office, with the corridors packed with smiling faces.  After so long with the Cerik, and the Ferreer and even the runners, the faces began to look all alike -- family.  He tried to say thanks to everyone, but as he stumbled, he realized just how tired he had become.

Father led him into the office.  Mother was already there.  She looked him over carefully.  

“He’s okay,” she said to Father after a moment.  “And I don’t detect any distortion.”

He nodded.  “That’s good.  James, it’s good to have you back.  I suspect you have a story to tell?”

###

Some hours after he had lifted off on the journey with Rita, a line of fire had flashed in the sky, stretching between Cerik’s moon and another planet.  When Father had asked about it, he was told that likely the space ship had been destroyed in a charging accident.  It had happened before.  Mother had been monitoring his body at the time and she thought it was possible that he might have made the leap to another star, but she couldn’t be certain.

All they could do was to wait and see.

James gave his version, step by step.

Father shook his head.  “I wasn’t aware that you were going on one of the large ships.  I’m surprised one person was able to fly it.”

“I helped.”  

Father smiled.  “I’ll want a book written, detailing everything you learned about the ship.  We’ll need it eventually.”

When he related the visit with the Ferreer, Mother looked very worried.  “They think of themselves as the next step in evolution.”

“Right.  They don’t think of attachment as a problem.  They had trouble understanding why I didn’t want my brain rewired so I could participate.”

Father scratched his chin.  “It may seem like arrogance on their part, but it worked out in our favor this time.  I had hoped you could get down, drop her off and leave before they could stop you, but they just don’t seem that aggressive.  The hive mind lasts longer than any individual.  It’s easy for them to wait until we ‘evolve’ and join them voluntarily.”

Mother nodded. “And until then, they can study Rita.”

No one smiled.

###

A feast was planned, but James demanded a bath and clean clothes.  He was turned loose.  There would be other interviews.  He would be working for a long time, documenting what he had seen.

And the star maps will be the hardest. 

From the beginning, one of his secret orders was to view and memorize the star patterns from both the Cerik space and Ferreer space.  Abe had drawn a map from his memories of Earth’s stars, with nearly a five hundred dots on it.  If he could do the same, drawn from his excellent views out the ship’s window, they would have the first possibility of building a three dimensional map of the stars, with some hint as to where the human homeworld might be.

It was going to be a long chore, but maybe some day, they might discover lost Earth.

###

James slipped into the water with a profound sense of relief.  Did the Cerik bathe?  He certainly hadn’t seen any hint of a bath on their ship.

A familiar splash caught his attention.  Pam swam up.

He smiled.  “I’ve been looking for you.”

She timidly approached.  “I couldn’t get close.  There were too many people.”

“Are you pregnant yet?”

She shook her head.  “I was too upset when they said you might have died.  Why didn’t you let me know you were going on a space flight?”

He shrugged.  “It was a big secret.”

She settled up beside him.  “I cried.”

He put his arm around her.  “I’m sorry.  I almost died, if it’s any comfort.”

She poked him.  “No, it’s not.”

“And I’m taking down the broom, after the feast tonight.”

She leaned against him.  “Can I get my place in line?”

“You’re the first one I’ve told.”

“Good.”

He sighed.  He still had no idea how this whole sex thing would play out.  He still might become a joke among the cousins, but that didn’t seem that important any more.  He had work to do, documenting his trip, an writing a book on how to fly a boat.  And after that, he had to get back into the repair shop.  The hands-on experience he’d gained using the devices made some of the things on his failure shelf worth another look.

“You know, I was given the chance to be a telepath.”

“Oh?  By the Ferreer?”

“Yes.  And I was tempted.  Tempted to be the new Father with Rita as the Mother, starting another U’tanse family on their planet.”

He chuckled.  “When I told that to Father and Mother, they both shuddered.”

“They did?”

“Yes, they said as proud as they were of how their family had turned out, they wouldn’t wish that role on anyone.”

Pam was quiet for a moment.  “Was Rita pretty?”

“Um.  I guess.  She reminded me of you.  Sort of a Pam without a personality.  That was the scary part.  It is so wonderful being home, with real people.

“And I’m really glad you found me.”  He pulled her tighter.

After a moment, he said, “But I’d better get dry, and get dressed.  I’m looking forward to better food than biscuits.”

“And lots of girls trying to get your attention, I bet.”

“They can just wait their turn.”

Tales of the U'tanse: Mercy Run - Part 21 of 22

© 2011 by Henry Melton

The leap across the stars did not take long, but the pilot took care to position the ship into a stable orbit around the planet.

James only had a few minutes before he was called back to the boat.  He found one of the kills.  There was little but bloody bones left in the corridor, and some of those bones were gnawed into pieces.

Who cleans this up? He was the first U’tanse to ever be taken on a space mission.  Did Cerik cubs get the cleanup jobs?

But it looked like this time, as before, the ship was going to be left as is, bloody and all, in orbit.  Would it power itself down?  James didn’t know.  He spent the waiting time as the Cerik piloted the boat down, refreshing his ineda exercises.  He was again back in the Cerik world.

It had been nice, for a bit, to just let my mind relax.  I won’t get a chance to do that again any time soon.

He had been ordered to stay back with the runners.

“<These will likely be sensitive to Cerik air, like the Geisel runners.  I have set...>”

“<Stay put.  I will give you orders with the shouter.>”

James moved back a step.  Just for a moment, as the pilot left the boat, he glimpsed the buildings outside.

This isn’t Home.  Where am I?

It had to be some large Cerik city.  There were many buildings and courtyards wide open under the brown sky.  

He tapped away at the menu pad until he discovered how to show a simple visual display of the surroundings.  The map gave him the details in a small, oddly-accented voice.  This was the Perch of Hagnel -- the Name of the Tenthonad clan who owned him.  

It made sense.  The pilot had come to the Name to report on his mission.  I just hope that I survive it.  He had great faith in Father.  Father had defended the U’tanse since the beginning.  But did Father even know that he was back?

He watched the view outside.  As near as he could tell, the boat had landed in a large courtyard.  There were a number of Cerik around, and more were arriving.  They all seemed to keep their distance.

Afraid of Ferreer contamination, probably.  And that was one point in favor of his early death.  Somebody out there was arguing for his quick slaughter, just to be on the safe side.  Even the pilot was at risk for the same reasons.  

James remembered the thoughts Rita had pulled from the pilot.  Something about a guild that had sabotaged the mission.  The pilot wanted them dead.

Could he have gone on a revenge hunt?  And if so, what would happen to him?

I have to get Home.  

The training he’d gotten all his life was simple.  The U’tanse would survive if they were no threat, and they were useful.

I need to be useful.  He couldn’t argue that he wasn’t a threat.  A super intelligent hive mind might have planted some hidden trigger in his brain -- one that he wouldn’t be aware of.  

I have to be ready to report everything I’ve learned about the Ferreer.  They might even demand I drop my ineda.

That’s why assertive thoughts were needed.  He needed to be ready to think only about his experiences on the planet and his strong opinions.  And nothing else.

The runners began some kind of squabble among themselves.  It was quickly over.  You obviously have no idea you’re surrounded by hundreds of bloodthirsty predators.

James looked them over again.  Four was a dangerously low breeding pool, but if they could be cultivated as yet another rare food item for the Cerik, they could be very valuable.  The Ferreer, like little green men with tails, had told him that the Cerik who had been absorbed had all liked the taste of this variety.  They were a peace offering to a species who didn’t understand what peace was.

From all he knew, he suspected they would be poisoned by the Cerik air, but the Name knew about that issue already with the Geisel runners and the U’tanse.  The pilot wasn’t concerned, but he’d need to make that clear if questioned.  It would be sad to bring them here, just to have them curl up and die from the air.

On the display, there was a group of Cerik approaching from one avenue.  The crowd began to appear more agitated.

“<U’tanse!  Release the runners.>”

It was the pilot, speaking into some gadget, a shouter, strapped to his chest.

All of them?  Surely not.

But that larger Cerik beside him just might be the Name himself.  Be subservient.

“<For the Name.>”  He managed to shout, without too much of a stutter.

He opened the gates and pushed them all out.  He didn’t attempt to follow.

The rule of survival here was to follow orders.  No more.  No less.

He dashed back to the display.  

Poor things.  The runners dashed back and forth, penned into the center of the courtyard by the very dangerous beasts all around them.

There was a shout.  It didn’t come over the boat’s shouter, but it was loud enough to be heard through the hull.  The Name was saying something very formal, some kind of chant.  James puzzled out part of it.

He could only shake his head as the Name, the pilot, and one other large Cerik moved in on the runners.  It looked more like a dance than a hunt, but a hunt it was.  The grazers were trapped, and from three sides, the giant beasts with formidable jaws and sharp claws closed in, until in an explosion of blood, all four were torn apart and eaten.  The surrounding crowd cheered, only wishing that they could have participated.

So much for a valuable crop.  As near as he could understand from the stilted chant, the Name had considered it more important to publicly slaughter beasts from the Ferreer planet than any economic considerations.

James shook his head.  Maybe they were right.  No other Name on the planet could claim to have taken blood from the Ferreer planet.  That was a very Cerik kind of brag, and just might be worth it.

And if the pilot had been sent on the mission as punishment, he must have come up in the world to have been permitted to participate in the kill.

###

Tales of the U'tanse: Mercy Run - Part 20 of 22

© 2011 by Henry Melton

"The air is clean."

He nodded. Standing in the door, he was struck by the color. In Father's writings, he'd used the term 'sky blue', which never made sense to him, since the Cerik sky was a reddish brown. 

But this sky was blue. It shaded from darker hues directly overhead to a pale color on the horizon. 

"The Greeters of the People will be coming from that direction."

James fought the urge to run -- to seal the door and climb back into the sky. "Greeters" could not dispel the fears of "Eaters of Minds".

"Don't take my mind over."

Rita patted his hand. "I want you to stay with me, but I won't force your will."

"But you can do that, right?"

Rita's smile didn't waver.  “You only know us through the stories of the Cerik.  Yes, we had to stop them from scattering destruction across the world, but forcing a merger is not our preference.”

“A merger?  Only some of the Cerik were telepathic.  Did you control their muscles?”

Rita watched the cloud of dust on the horizon.  “No.  It was a telepathic merger.  In species like the Cerik, and the U’tanse, where there are some minds that cannot sense other thoughts, there is often a way to activate that ability.”

“You could make someone like me telepathic?”  His mind raced.  If that were possible...

She smiled at him.  “Does that appeal to you?  We could make it happen.”

James considered it. How could he not?  There wasn’t a day in his life when he didn’t stumble over some fact that everyone else knew, because they were telepaths.  All his life, he was the one left out.  And now, it was offered to him.

“How?  How would you change me?”

“The U’tanse are new to us.”  Rita smiled, “This one is the first to have embraced the People, so we are still learning how your mind works.  With the Cerik, the telepaths connected deeply with the People -- their motive was to learn our weaknesses, and so discover how to attack us.  But as they linked in, their motives changed, and soon became part of us.

“You are already aware that your sisters and brothers can control the cells of their bodies.  They can also control your cells.  We did the same for the others, who did not think of themselves as telepaths.  The patterns of cells and their interconnections -- developed over the life of the telepaths, were duplicated in the brains of the non-telepaths, opening up their new comprehension of the world.”

James tried to imagine it.  “You took brain cells and clusters in the non-telepathic Cerik and changed them to match the telepaths?”

“Essentially correct.” The Rita shaped person talking to him had become different, like a tutor, lecturing him.

“And you propose to do the same with me?  To copy part of Rita’s brain and overlay part of mine?”

“The part that opens up telepathy, yes.”

James asked, “And what would I lose?  What part of me would be lost when that part of the brain is changed?”

She shook her head.  “Unknown.  We have not known Rita and you long enough to completely understand those details.”

He saw that the dust cloud was getting larger.  A group of vehicles were approaching.  James had a gut feeling that once the ‘People’ were represented by more than Rita, things would be different.

And would he even know it, if his mind began to change?

“No.  I don’t want my brain altered in any way.  I’ve lived without telepathy.  I don’t need it.  And I want to get back off the planet just as soon as I can.  The pilot might abandon me.”

Rita sighed.  “I understand, but he’s in dan right now.  Don’t you want to see the People?  Surely Father will want to know everything you can tell him about us.”

He wanted to be gone.  He glanced back inside.  “Will you have food here?  Should I leave you the sack?”

“The People have an excellent understanding of biology.  Compatible food will be found, or made.  The U’tanse will probably be easier to sustain than the Cerik.  Merging minds did not change their need for freshly killed meat.”

He looked her in the eyes.  “Can I talk to Rita alone?  Is that possible?”

She hesitated, and then over the course of ten seconds, she sagged.

Rita blinked, her eyes watered, and she moved in little abrupt shifts.

He took her hand.  “Rita?  Are you okay?”

Her voice wavered.  “No.  They left me.”

“They’ll come back.”  He squeezed her hand.  “Do you know what’s going on?  Do you understand?”

She wouldn’t look up his eyes.  She nodded.  “I want them back.  I want the People.”

He sighed.  “I just needed to know.”

She lunged forward and wrapped her arms around him, her face buried against his chest.  “You were nice.  I’ll miss you.”

He had no response, other than to hold her. He whispered, “I just had to be sure.”

She sniffed, and then pulled back.  He let her go.  In a moment she straightened up, she smiled, taller and happy.

“Don’t make a run for it.  We have a present for you.”  The three vehicles were just pulling up next to the boat.

###

The Cerik ship hadn’t left.  James slashed, placing the target mark on the loading hatch and activating the automated docking sequence.

The pilot only growled at him over the distance shouter as he reported that he was returning from the Ferreer planet.  One of the theories he’d heard growing up was that the Cerik’s hunting growl set up resonance in the bodies of prey, startling them into running, even when they were safely hidden.  He had no idea if it were correct or not, but his instincts were crying out that he should flee, not go into the predator’s den.

But he was at least happy to see the ship.  The distances were so great that the landing boat’s navigation display had lost track of the main vehicle.  Once he had gained space with his cargo, he was horrified that he had no idea where the ship had gone.  Only when he had made ‘contact’ with the pilot via the distance shouter did he notice that a marker appeared on the display when the pilot was growling at him.

The trip back to the ship took him only ten hours.  Not only was he eager to be gone from the Ferreer planet, the cargo was driving him crazy.

When the boat settled to the deck and the hangar refilled with air, he sighed and walked back to the cargo chamber, where he’d secured them behind a restraining gate.  The big eyes all stared at him.

He chose one.  “Sorry, girl.”  He snagged the rope collar around her long neck and pulled her with him out of the boat and up to the hangar hatchway.  He shoved her through and slapped her haunch.  She scampered away,  her hooves clattering on the corridor floor.

He hurried back into the boat and activated the shouter.

“<I have returned.  My mind is intact.  I have also brought some runners from the grasslands below.  I have released one into the corridors.”>

There was a great shout that echoed throughout the boat.  The runners in the cargo area stirred uncertainly.  James reduced the sound level.  He repositioned himself so that he could watch the animals.

Outside, muffled by rooms and corridors, one of their own was being hunted.  He didn’t think it would take long.

About ten minutes later, the shouter spoke, in a faint voice.  “<Release another.>”

James tried to make his voice properly obedient.  “<Another will be released.  It will take a moment.  Please note that there are only five remaining.>”

“<Release another.>”

Even quietly, there was no give in that voice.

James chose the next one.  “Let’s hope you’re the last one.  Come with me.”

The grazer was compliant, and he had no trouble leading it to the door, until it opened.

Long slitted nostrils opened wide and the animal bucked and tore loose from his grip, dashing at top speed, skidding on the metal floor.  Quickly, it was gone.

James hurried back inside the boat.

It was longer this time.  Again, James had been watching the animals in the boat.  There wasn’t a hint that these creatures had any telepathic connection to the ones that had gone outside to their death.  That second one had sniffed something in the air, perhaps the blood of the first one, but that was all.  As near as he could tell, the good-will offering by the Ferreer had no Trojan Horse telepathic nature.

They might not even last long enough to return to the Cerik world, at the rate the pilot is gorging himself.

But James was happy to accept them.  The pilot had gotten very hungry while waiting.  Better them than me.

The shouter spoke, “<U’tanse.  Get to the engine room.  We will be preparing to leap.>”

James nodded to himself.  The pilot was sounding normal again.

“<I am going there.>”

###

Tales of the U'tanse: Mercy Run - Part 19 of 22

© 2011 by Henry Melton

It was his fluttering eyelids that called him to a stop.  He’d found the way to speed up the boat, and had dug into the Delense menu pad options.  He could force it to go even faster, at the expense of all the automated safety features.

But that flutter wasn’t Ferreer attacking his mind, it was just exhaustion.

He left the boat on automatic and settled down beside Rita.

“It’ll take most of the day to get us there.  I need to rest.  Is that okay with you?”

She was expressionless.  Her eyes were open, watching the navigation screen, but she might well be asleep or in a trance.

He looked into the sack.  She hadn’t been eating.  He pulled out a bottle and coaxed her into sipping until her body’s need for water took over and she gulped down the whole bottle.  He put a biscuit to her lips and she nibbled about half  of it.  He almost dozed off, holding her.  Enough for now.

He stretched out on the floor, his arm around her and closed his eyes.

###

She was warm beside him.  “I’m glad you removed the broom.”

He was content to hold her and not think about it.  Warm, smooth, and curved, there was little to think about.

“We could stay together.”

He grunted.  “You know that won’t work.”

“They would let us.” She held him tighter.  “Everything would be different.  You wouldn’t be an outsider anymore.”

He shook his head, “My duty...”

###

“<U’tanse!  Has your mind been eaten yet?>”

James shook awake, wrapped in Rita’s blanket and her arms. 

“What?”  He pulled free and got to his feet.  “<What did you say?>”

“<Have the Ferreer eaten you yet?>”  The angry voice came from the ceiling overhead.

Oh, the shouter.  I forgot.

“<No.  My mind is still my own.  I was sleeping.>”  He checked the navigation screen.  “<We are half way there.>”

“<Has the female’s mind been eaten?>”

James looked at Rita, watching him.  “<I don’t know.>”

There was a grumble of disgust, and the sound shut off.

James took a moment to compose himself.  He had been asleep, but he wasn’t sure she had been.  He glanced back at Rita.  She was half undressed.

His body was feeling guilty.  He had memory of holding her.  Certainly we didn’t have sex while I was asleep. I’m still dressed. I’d know, wouldn’t I?

He closed his eyes and took a deep breath.  He’d dressed the little ones all his life.  She was just the same.  Just more developed.

James made her get up on her feet and he tugged her tunic back into place.  She was a little girl, in his care.  He wouldn’t take advantage of that.  He combed her hair back with his fingers.

“Rita, are you in contact with the Ferreer?”

“They know she is coming.”

What mind said those words?

“Tell them... Tell them to leave my mind alone!”

###

“You and Rita would be happy together.  It would be no different than Mother and Father, a couple starting out on a new planet.  Only this time, the Ferreer would be there to help, every step of the way.”

James tried to ignore what she said.  The closer they got to the planet, the more animated Rita’s body became.  She wandered about the cabin, looking at the blue planet growing visibly larger and more detailed on the screen and watching him.

He locked his mind down with his best ineda.  It made no difference to her.

She said, “You don’t need to do that.  Those surface thought tricks work fine against point telepaths, but not against an endless array.”

“I’ll make my own choices.  I’ll do anything to keep my own mind.”

He slashed his finger through the air, refining the target landing zone.  The original one had been in the ocean.

“Don’t do that.”

“What?”

“Don’t go straight in.  It will overheat your craft.  Remember how the boat pilot chose a gentle curve when taking you out of the Cerik world atmosphere?  Use that technique to gently curve down to the surface.”

“How?” 

He barely formed the thought when Rita walked a few steps closer and said, “We can read surface thoughts, and memories, and dreams that you can’t even recall.  We also remember the thoughts of Cerik who came before, flying boats like yours.  We have their training.  You would be wise to take this advice.”

He was resistant, but what they said made sense.

Rita approached the display and touched a point on the planet’s image.  “This would be a good landing place.  It is flat, with clear weather, and we can get a reception party to take care of Rita very quickly.”

It occurred to him that the Ferreer had total control over Rita.  With their experience, they could probably land the craft with her.

“Yes,” she said.  “But wouldn’t you enjoy doing it yourself?”

He looked at her face.  The eyes were like Pam’s, the hair and skin like Pam’s, but the smile was old and wise. The effect was a little unsettling.  

“Tell me when I’m doing it wrong.”  The Ferreer wanted them to land safely.  He could trust them to give him good landing advice.

He activated the distance shouter.  “<This is the U’tanse again.  I am approaching the atmosphere.>”

There was silence for a moment.  “<Has your mind been eaten?>”

“<I am still myself, but my passenger speaks with the words of the Ferreer.>”

There was no reply.

Rita said, “He is frightened.”

“The Ferreer are the monsters Cerik frighten their cubs with.”

“The Cerik who lived here were content.”

“None remain?”

“Their bodies gave out from old age.  They were all male, so no new ones were born.”

“Would you have allowed that?”  The Cerik were his childhood monsters.

Rita tilted her head.  “There are currently seven species, from various worlds, that live together as the Ferreer.  Rita will be the first of number eight.  And  it would be wonderful if you stayed with her and became the father of more.”

The display shifted into a map of the terrain below. Rita whispered in his ear, "See where the river curves. Aim for that."

James was having trouble making sense of the image. The only maps he'd seen were internal corridor maps of Home and fanciful drawings of the human home world. This was closer to Father's sketchings of Europe than anything else. 

"The fat line is a river?"

"Yes. See where it bends. Try to land in the center of the curve."

James tried to put everything out of his head but the task of making two gentle curves -- the altitude and the direction. 

New details of the land appeared as he approached. There were brown, cubical structures. Many small buildings scattered evenly through tall dark green and black vegetation. Broad tan fields were circled by uneven rows of green.

Rita pointed. "That field is where you should land."

He slashed the air and placed the targeting icon right in the middle.  The shifting view of the ground began slowing dramatically. 

A moment later, they were down. James left the engines idle but in standby. 

Rita smiled and took his hand, "Please come out and meet the People."

###

Tales of the U'tanse: Mercy Run - Part 18 of 22

© 2011 by Henry Melton

It was hours when he approached the control room and rattled the wrench on the wall.

“<Enter!>”

He stepped in and tried to make sense of the navigation screen visible behind the pilot.

“<Report.>”

“<The ship is now safe.  Do you want to know what had been damaged?>”

“<No.  That’s your job.>”

James nodded.  “<What happened to us?>”  It wasn’t really the place of a slave to ask, but he was just too tired to care.

The pilot growled.  For a moment it didn’t appear he would answer, then he raised himself from his crouch.  “<Enemies gave me the wrong information.  I’m a pilot, not one of the Rear Talon guild.  The ship charged much faster than I was told.  If I had waited another minute, the ship would have been vaporized by an overload.  It was already too late to shut down the charging beams properly, so I commanded the ship to leap.>”

He snarled and twitched with satisfaction.  “<I will have some eyes when we get back.  And they think I’m dead.  They’ll never see me coming.>”

James had no idea whether the Cerik was truthful or delusional.  It wasn’t his concern whether one Cerik killed another right now.  They did that all the time.

He waited a moment, and then asked, “<How soon will it take to get to the planet?>”

The pilot growled low.  “<I’m not moving.  We’re close enough.  Take the boat and get rid of your female. Remember, I am getting hungry.>”

“<I was told you would train me on how to fly the boat.>”

“<That was never my job.  The one who brought you should have done that.  Be gone and remember to use the distance shouter, so I’ll know when you mind has been eaten and I can leave.>”

The Cerik settled down into a dan.  

James hesitated just a moment and then backed out of the room.

###

I was never trained on this.  I don’t even know where the planet is.  Does the pilot?

He reached the room and tapped the controls to equalize the pressure.

She was waiting patiently with the blanket draped over her shoulders.

“Rita, we ...”

“... need to leave.”  She stood up.

“Rita, is the pilot really going to let us fly off without training?”

She just stood there, eyes unfocussed.  

I guess he really is in dan.  

“Come on then.”

He picked up their sack of food and walked them towards the hangar where the other boat waited.  

If the Cerik can fly these things, then how hard could it be?

The hangar room was large enough for several of the boats, but there was only one of them.

If I don’t come back, how will the pilot get back to the surface.  Can he even activate the leap engine by himself?

He looked at Rita, so passive, so detached.  Are you listening to me?

This was all to save her life -- or at least to save the U’tanse from having to kill her. 

None of this.  We have to get clear of the ship before the pilot does something stupid.

He made sure Rita was seated against a wall, in case they bumped against something, and then hesitantly activated the controls.

The menus showed several screens.  There was a navigation screen that only signaled that they were inside the hangar deck. There were controls for the air, for weapons, and for the engines.  He quickly set the air to U’tanse standard.

Power was low.  They’d given Father the dregs of their vehicles, hadn’t they?  Had the Name written me off from the very beginning?  Was it just a gesture to pretend to Father that the Name considered the U’tanse important?

He glanced back to where Rita sat, waiting for him to take care of her.

That’s it isn’t it?  She was tired of taking care of herself and just gave up.

But that doesn’t let me off the hook.

He looked through the controls.  Somehow the boat had to be able to get more power.  Maybe the ship could power up in the middle of space with the pusher engines, but he doubted the boat could do the same.  Little devices get power from the bigger ones.  That was the rule at home.

After digging through the Delense menu pad, he tried the light beams.  Cerik had to be able to power their boats and that’s all they used.  James slashed with his hands, trying to mimic the talon gestures.

Ah!  There it is.  In the navigation screen, there were bubbles like on the main ship’s power settings.  He directed one of the bubbles to the image of the boat.  There was a hum and shortly, the boat had increased its power levels.  James kept at it, adding iconic power bubbles until the boat said it was close to full.

The external hull doors were illustrated on the navigation display.  A gesture caused a warning signal, and after a moment they began to open.  Using the gesture controls was simple.  Everything was automated.  Presumably, the hangar air was pumped out, or else there would have been a gale on the deck when those outside doors came open.

Just go with the flow.  The Cerik don’t worry about all this stuff.

From Father’s coaching and from what he’d seen on the boat ride up from the surface, he soon directed the boat outside.

The navigation screen changed once he cleared the bulk of the big ship.

There were stars, faintly decorating the background.  But there were other things as well.  There was the ship, and there were a dozen balls.

Which is the Ferreer planet?

Rita stepped up beside him.  “I hear them.”

“Is it the Ferreer you hear?”

She pointed at one of the balls on the screen.  “They call me.”

He hesitated.  She was almost acting like a person.  Had the people back Home made a mistake?  They said they couldn’t find Rita’s mind anymore.  Had it come back?

She stared intently at the display.

“Rita, I have to know.  Are you back?  Do you want to go to the Ferreer? I won’t take you there unless you want to go.”

It was a silly thing to say.  They were committed.  What was his alternative?  Hijack the big ship, kill the Cerik and learn to fly it by himself?  

But he couldn’t turn her over to a hive mind if she were struggling to regain her identity.  He just couldn’t.

Rita turned to him.  “We need to go there.”

“Rita, you know what will happen there?  You’ll get absorbed into an alien mind.  They won’t even be people like us.  There will be no way back.”

“We need to go there.  We will have a place.”

He sighed.  “You will have a place.  I can’t stay there.”

She looked back at the display.  Maybe there was a hint of a smile on her face, but he couldn’t be sure.

There is no help for it.

He slashed his hand through the web of light beams,  a pointer extended from the image of the boat to the planet.  The big ship began moving off.  They were moving.

James frowned at the display.  “How can I make us move faster?  It’ll take days at this rate.”

###