Chương 75: 049 – Bumps

Tiikasia had thought that meeting a new civilization of intelligent life would be result in more… difficulties. He'd expected to have to struggle with language barriers, differing cultural mores, ignorance of what facial expressions and body language meant, and both sides accidentally insulting each other due to not knowing social cues.

A part of him had feared that old cliché of somehow starting a violent inter-stellar war due to some small misunderstanding or as a result of mutually incompatible cultural paradigms. Once, that last had just been an ironic thought, a silly notion picked up from far too many science fiction writers who had no sense of scale. Then the Free Peoples had met the humans, and the idea had stopped being silly and become and absolutely horrifying reality, because humans apparently wanted a violent interstellar war…

In contrast, further encounters with the Kaydekeen was surprisingly smooth. Despite the theatrical and stylized way that Water From The Sky spoke, they were perfectly capable of understanding freespeech and were themselves… mostly understandable, though he wasn't the only one who had to resist the urge to smile when they talked.

The Kaydekeen also had a degree of familiarity with the Free Peoples' culture, and visibly made a conscientious effort to be as polite and considerate as possible by the standards of the Hegemony. Their exchanges were essentially a progressing checklist of first contact concerns, beginning with their hosts presenting them with samples of bacteria and viruses so that they could begin developing measures to immunize themselves against them, "So you can visit the surface without suits!"

the alien envoy had said cheerfully. It was followed by developing mutually usable codecs for one-way audio, two-way audio, one-way video, and two-way audio/visual communications. Some of it had clearly been based on legacy public transmission codecs, which made sense since the Kaydekeen had clearly managed to decode those old public transmissions.

Now that they had confirmed that the Dhekhajhyde had been seen by the planet, he had given the order for the ship to alter its course to something more direct and efficient, meaning they were able to cruise to 'Nightmare' in three days instead of ten. That had resulted in a quick lesson on Kaydekeen timekeeping standards, where a comparison had revealed that the same period was equal to seven and a half of the local planetary day.

The Kaydekeen had also given them permission to begin more active sensor scans of Nightmare as well as the star system as a whole, which they had gratefully accepted. That had led to being presented with a chart and a scroll depicting the rest of the major bodies in the system. It seemed the Kaedekin had learned from the first day, because the bodies on the chart had two names: one was the original name in human speech, and another name in freespeech, like a subtitle.

'Nightmare' had been subtitled 'The Inescapable Terror In the Darkness'. All the planets got names like that. Tiikasia wasn't sure if the Kaydekeen were trying to impress them or intimidate them, but as far as the ship's scans could discern, the planet didn't seem to deserve such an ominous moniker. Of course, that was only in regards to its climate and geography. Perhaps it had evolved dangerous predatory megafauna that had resulted in the distressing name. Fortunately, they had one of the locals to ask about it."

Oh no," Water From The Sky replied when Rirris had asked." The animals on Nightmare aren't anything especially dangerous or noteworthy. At least, not the ones on land. The ones in the water can get really big though, and we really haven't tried to study them much because we don't want to antagonize them." Water From The Sky was quite willing to stay and talk for as long as their suit had air once they'd gone through the contents of the agenda they were visiting about.

They had moved their discussion to one of the conference rooms near the airlock, under the watchful eyes of warriors who were now there as an honor guard. That was their story if it ever came to light that the warriors were all magicshapers, and it probably will. It was probably only a matter of time before the delicate probing about each other's magic began…

"Not studied them?" Rirris said, her scholarly urges aroused as Tiikasia sat with them and did his best to follow along with the conversation." Why not?"" Well, we've never really gotten around to picking up the skills needed for ocean-going boats," Water From the Sky said with a strange tone in their voice. He'd have to ask Rirris about it later." We just went straight back to flying since it was more convenient, and them back to space. Skipped big boats almost entirely."" Really? You have no watercraft?"

Rirris said incredulously." Oh, we have them, but they're for lakes and rivers and shallow water. You know, where we can use landmarks? We, uh, didn't really get around to learning how to navigate with stars until we were already in space."

"Your technological development sounds like it was very interesting."

"Eh, it wasn't so much 'development' as 'knowing what could already be done and rebuilding up to it'," Water From The Sky said.

"Historically, a lot of technological development is either noticing scientific principles and finding ways to use them, making new materials and finding ways to use them, or starting with a dream and finding a way to make it real. We already knew it you could do things like go to space or make computers, we just had to figure out how to do them again." The Kaydekeen paused." Although several of the computers surviving the crash really helped. There were a lot of useful reference books in there." Rirris laughed."

I suppose that does make it easier to keep your knowledge base intact. Though does this mean we'll be forbidden from observing any of the animals on your world?" Unauthorized use: this story is on Amazon without permission from the author. Report any sightings." Oh no, observation won't be no problem. There's things we do and don't do that you'll need to know about while you're doing it… although since one of us will be there too, it should be fine."" Of course.

"Rirris glanced sideways towards him, then asked," do you have any specific laws regarding hunting?"" Hunting? Uh, eat and use every part of the animal so that none of it goes to waste? Sorry, I don't go hunting myself, but I can ask a friend of mine next chance I get. Why do you want to know?"" Oh, some of the crew like to hunt when they're given time off, but it's not always an option in worlds we visit," Rirris said." Ah, I understand.

Well, I'll ask and see if I can get samples of the local game meat for you to analyze. If we can find one that the Free Peoples can mostly eat without adverse reactions to your body chemistry, I'm sure going hunting will be no problem. It's late spring, so there should be more rain than snow."" The warriors among the crew will appreciate that. What is it about the creatures in the water in particular that makes them noteworthy?"" Well, they're what we call Crystalborne,"Water From The Sky said."

Beings with venecite naturally crystalized at certain points of their anatomy. Have you run into anything like those?"" Oh, you mean dustbound?" Rirris said, and Tiikasia perked up at the familiar word. So did the other warriors in the room, though they stayed at their posts." Yes, we're… familiar with those." Water From The Sky paused, tilting their head to the side." Oh. Sorry for bringing it up."" It's fine, it's just… a complicated subject among the Hegemony. You were saying?"" … Crystalborne.

You see, they're an important part of the ecosystem of Nightmare's oceans…" Despite seemingly good intentions on everyone's part, and Kaydekeen being very forthcoming with information, there were still a few bumps on the road to understanding.

One had occurred when Tiikasia had asked about their governmental structure, because if they were likely to become some kind of pollical point of contention, he'd rather know sooner than later. That had led to the revelation that the Kaydekeen were technically a united world government, which was rare in cultures restricted to a single planet.

The only one that the Free People's had encountered previously were the Hienlvheessim, and that was because the position of ruler was established through ritualized violent combat, where all who wanted to become king declared their intention, and then fought each other in personal combat until there was only one victor.

Naturally, their ruler was inevitably a magicshaper, because as powerful as individual Hienlvheessimi could be if their bodies were sufficiently mutated, one with magic would still be significantly more dangerous. Water From the Sky had been quite willing to expound upon their system of government… or rather, the lack thereof. By the explanation of their Logistics, Supply, Training, Engineering and Administration branches, they seemed to have a functioning and robust bureaucracy.

It just didn't seem to answer to anyone, as if they considered the concept of a central leadership to be unnecessary. It had resulted in a lot of jokes once word of it had spread across the ship, except for the political science scholars in the Science Department, who'd all gone manic and started going over the recording of the discussion word by word.

The system itself wasn't that dissimilar to how the Free Peoples had originally organized themselves when enough of them had managed to free themselves from the accursed demons—the shinkamrai doing the bulk of the fighting against those still in the demon's thrall, kivhar acting as spies, isauna maintaining what equipment they'd managed to acquire, tijaka handling their logistics, girefa making new weapons and anything else the movement needed, and mirha acting as scouts and saboteurs to disrupt the demon's infrastructure and freeing more and more people.

However, even then they'd had leaders to decide what objectives needed to be prioritized, what needed to wait until they had more resources to devote to it, and whether or not something actually furthered their objectives. It had evolved over the centuries since they'd driven the accursed demons off their conquered worlds to become wanderers among the stars, but even so they'd still retained the need for some kind of leader. The Kaydekeen had no similar positions, or at least, none they admitted to…

because they considered government and anyone who's part of it to be evil and didn't want such evil people making decisions that could affect people, which had resulted in even more jokes. Their civilization apparently had what seemed like leadership positions, but by Water From The Sky's description, their purpose was to act as internal group mediators and 'paperwork doers', who did all the paperwork so that the other parts of the organization knew what their part was doing.

Tiikasia had resigned himself to finding out what leadership selection method the Kaydekeen used at the worst possible time and asking if the ship's political science scholars could speak with someone more knowledgeable on the subject. The alien had agreed to facilitate the latter, although it would take a while since the one Water From The Sky knew of was currently occupied.

This lack of government leadership had become slightly more concerning when they had discussed the Kaydekeen's military, and it was made obvious that they definitely understood the concept of military leaders, as each branch of the 'Defense Services' answered to a 'Sorceress Captain', which seemed to be either roughly analogous to Ohmadia or one rank higher, since they commanded those who would be put in command of ships.

More troubling was that these Sorceress Captains didn't answer to any other authority, and were effectively completely independent and autonomous…" I'm sorry, I guess I'm explaining it all wrong,"Water From The Sky said after a thoughtful—and horrified—silence that had perhaps lingered a little too long, Rirris hastily translating." But I can't think of a simpler way to put it? Ah, maybe I can arrange a field trip for you when it's safe for you to come down to Nightmare so you can see it all for yourselves?

That's always fun, and there are always little sisters inspired to join the civil service after a field trip …" They had politely demurred against such an invitation until later, both so they wouldn't be beholden to it—Tiikasia suspected it was likely going to result in them being used for some kind of political posturing that wouldn't be explained to them—and to buy time until they could actually understand how the Kaydekeen's government worked.

Getting involved with the local bureaucracy and politics when you didn't even understand how it functioned was just asking to get thrown into the local jail on some charge. Better to wait until they had a better understanding of the local laws. And that had been the second bump. They had asked Water From The Sky for a copy of the local legal code. They had expected either a very long scroll or a very thick book. Instead, they'd been told that such a document didn't exist.