On Earth, there are three Triads intending to integrate
not only the three peoples and stop the war that threatens to break loose and
slaughter Humans and devastate their world; but to stop the war that consumes
Kiiote economy and Yown’Hoo moral fiber. All three intelligences hover on the
edge of extinction. The merger of Human-Kiiote-Yown’Hoo into a van der Walls
Society might not only save all three – but become something not even they
could predict. Something entirely new...
The young experimental Triads are made up of the smallest
primate tribe of Humans – Oscar and Xiomara; the smallest canine pack of Kiiote
– six, pack leaders Qap and Xurf; and the smallest camelid herd of Yown’Hoo – a
prime eleven, Dao-hi the Herd mother. On nursery farms and ranches away from
the TC cities, Humans have tended young Yown’Hoo and Kiiote in secret for
decades, allowing the two, warring people to reproduce and grow far from their
home worlds.
“We had nearly fallen into stagnation when we
encountered the Kiiote.”
“And we into internecine war when we encountered the
Yown’Hoo.”
“Yown’Hoo and
Kiiote have been defending themselves for a thousand revolutions of our Sun.”
“Together, we
might do something none of us alone might have done…a destiny that included
Yown’Hoo, Kiiote, and Human.” (2/19/2015)
Dao-hi, temporary Herd Mother of her tiny group, shuddered.
Por-go-el, a potential male, had given a good response; in
fact, precisely the response a mature male would have given. He didn’t
apologize, instead asking how he might serve the Herd – small as it was.
Dao-hi suddenly realized that there would be more to being a
Herd Mother than simply punishing stupidity. If she had thought first, then acted
second, Lan-mai-ti, whose body was potentially both male and female, and only a
bit larger than an Earth badger, might have died back in the snowbank. They had
very little capability for trapping heat in their bodies.
But now, it was running with her, last in the Herd, but
keeping up with herself and Por-go-el as they worked out their relationship.
She would have to reflect on this. Por-go-el had no need to know how close the Herd’s
least had come to death, so she said, “Por-go-el, you are potentially male, so
your nose is the only one among us that can detect the microscopically small
amounts of Ji-hi, Mother of All. I cannot as I am female; Lan-mai-ti cannot,
for it is simple potential. This is the reason the Lieutenant Commander Patrick
Bakhsh sent you with us. This is your destiny.” She surged ahead and was gratified
when the smaller Por-go-el followed the surge and kept up with her. For a moment,
she thought that it had actually grown larger in the past few days since they’d
left Minneapolis-St Paul.
That was impossible. It took a gorging feast for the growth
hormones to activate. It needed to feed in order to initiate the growth spurt
that would…
Por-go-el stopped abruptly, nose lifted in the air. It
puffed out a white cloud of hot, moist air, then drew in deeply. A moment
later, it said, “I smell something that did not grow on this Earth, Herd-mother.
It does not smell as the rest of us do. It smells…alien.”
Dao-hi held a howl of laughter in, coughing instead. Yown’Hoo
and Kiiote were both alien to Earth, though every one of them living now had
been born on Earth. She thought for a moment, then snorted again. She had never
met a member of a Herd other than the one on Earth, divided into three parts as
it was. She vaguely remembered being swapped out at birth, some of her
foal-sisters were surely among those of the other two Triads – one in Russia,
another in China. The rest were of no import.
“Are there others who are not in Herds on Earth?” said Lan-mai-ti.
“Of course, we are…”
Por-go-el leaped to her back and snapped, “There is another!
It is here!”
She shook hard, shaking the potential male loose. It grabbed
her foreleg as it fell, clinging to the joint. It was as if someone had
suddenly splinted it. She stumbled, tentacles snapping free and grabbing the impertinent
nothing. “Are you insane?” she shrieked.
The ground beneath them began to tremble then. She would
have shouted, “Earthquake!” on the home world, but in this part of North
America, earthquakes were so rare and so weak as to be virtually unheard of.
But even the potential and the immature moved to cling to her back as she began
to zig-zag rather than hold a steady, solid pace. Slipping ground cover, earth,
and ice had been common on Y’eh One of Seven Hundred and Thirty-nine, the world
that had given birth to the first Herd. Quakes, while they did not experience
them often, triggered a reflex run.
From a pine and oak wood, burst an immense white-tailed
buck, sixteen points of stone-hard, twisted antler bone. He led his harem that
came after him, a thundering animal herd that, for whatever reason, stirred Dao-hi’s
blood, reacting to the buck as if it were a powerful female. She wanted to
follow them…
An instant later, what she thought at first was a deformed
deer followed the animal herd.
Suddenly she realized what it was, turned her forward leap into
a stiff-legged stop. The potential and the immature dropped to the cold, frozen
ground. The elder Yown’Hoo, its long fur dragging over the snow, looked at her
then strode, every step difficult, stiff. Either she was decrepit or moved with
ultimate dignity. For a moment, Dao-hi stared
unable to choose between decrepitude or dignity.
Her decision flipped back and forth until the bass voice of
a Herd Mother, deeper than any voice she’d heard on Earth or in recordings,
said, “Daughter. Your presence is long-awaited. Welcome at long, long last.”
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