The Cold War between the Kiiote and the Yown’Hoo has become a shooting war. The only way to stop it is to lock Kiiote, Yown’Hoo and Human into a matrix of need – to create “super beings” capable of not only living together, but combining three different technologies into one. On Earth, there are three Triads – one in the US, one in India and one in China.
Protected by the Triad Corporation, they intend to integrate not only the three peoples and stop the war that slaughters Humans and devastates their world, but to stop the war that consumes Kiiote economy and Yown’Hoo moral fiber (literal in their case) – and eventually confront the extra-Universe aliens who created the Interstice.
According to the best and wisest of the Triad Societies, the Merger of Human-Kiiote-Yown’Hoo into a Congenic will produce a stable construct capable of incredible expansion, creativity, longevity...and wealth – for it seems that it is the Three alone who inhabit the Milky Way, though unknown to them, there is another called the Hive which must complete the Triad – hold it if you will.
Earth-Free Activists plan to blow up one of the Nurseries – places where the Yown’Hoo and Kiiote can actually breed and the young survive far from their homeworlds. One such is south of Winnipeg on the Canadian Prairies. It falls to the North American Triad to move to stop them without letting them know that they have been betrayed...or discover that someone has been betrayed.
The bus rattled across town until it stopped in front of the Old Metrodome. It had been sort of an experiment in cold-weather architecture. According to a history site, it also collapsed due to the megatonnes of snow that had fallen on it one winter.
I couldn’t believe that much snow could fall in winter, but I guess things were different back then. One of the climate sites I ditt on says we caused the coming Ice Age. Another one says we caused the coming Heat Wave. The third one...Forget it. I’m a science ditt geek. I like stuff like that.
Anyway, TriCo optioned it and turned it into quarters for us. Why was our house an entire domed stadium?
Think about it! How else can you feed a herd of eleven grazers, six carnivores and a pair of omnivores; give them places to live, work to do and the ability to be under constant surveillance by a gazillion intelligent beings – as well as provide security for a group of beings so unusual that there were only two others like it on the planet. (And MAN we’re they being raised weird! More on that later!)
They’d scooped up the plastic grass and replaced it with living prairie and farmland; landscaped the rows of seating into agricultural terraces where were could grow our own food; put in trees and then gave us the job of maintaining the place – while the best query marker gurus on the planet made sure we know all about everything.
They’d also surrounded the whole place with a ten kilometer “no-war zone” to keep us safe and turned the whole mess into one group of teenaged aliens in a fishbowl.
Thanks a lot. Most of the escalating war...’Shayla nudged me from her seat behind and said, “Where are you?
“In the bus with you,” I snarked. My mind sure wasn’t in the present. I turned and leaned backward. “Have you ever wondered why where here, ‘Shayla?” She rolled her eyes at me and dug an elbow into her favorite litter mate’s ribs.
Quill – who I call ‘Quillthebitch’ in my head, ‘cause, let’s face it, not only IS she one, but she ACTS like one – yelped and snapped at ‘Shayla who said in gutter !Grank, “Listen Quill, the philosopher has something to say!”
Quill gave me a grin, showing teeth almost as big and buck-toothed as a sabertooth’s. Then she said, “I wonder if he tastes like a philosopher, too?”
I turned around, irritated by both of them.
‘Shayla bobbed over the seat and said, “Oh, come on, Car! We’re just teasing!”
From the other side of the seat, I could hear Quillthebitch say clearly, “No we weren’t...” She yelped in real surprise and pain this time when ‘Shayla spun around and did something with her foot. I figured I’d try again, “Listen ‘Shay, I’m trying to be serious. I got a ditt about an hour ago.” He dug out my ipik and hit the project key. 3D letters leaped up between us. It read, “confhtgΛ/Humpcdone?”
Like I said, I sub to about two dozen casts, sites, commentcorps, and ditty. I ditt close to a thousand every week. Even if the lupes and llamas – that’s what we call the Kiiote and the Yown’Hoo when it’s just us Humans – could crack our codes, they wouldn’t understand what we were saying.
‘Shayla didn’t get it either. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
I shook my head and said, “The conflict is heating up. Is the Human peace done?”
“Oh,” she said. Shaking her head, she said, “I still don’t get what it means.” She hopped the back of the seat and dropped down beside me, sliding close. On the way, she avoided a few tentacle grabs and flirty tail brushes.
In order to maintain my focus, I started yammering, “The commentator of the day’s looking at how an escalation of the war between the Kiiote and the Yown’Hoo would affect the Human-brokered commercial peace that’s existed for most of the time their young have been being born on Earth and our people taking care of them while they fought their war in far off star systems or whatever.”
She shrugged.
Sometimes she bugged the living daylights out of me. So I tried a more direct route, “What if the aliens start shooting up OUR home place?”
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