The young experimental Triads are made up of the
smallest primate tribe of Humans –two; the smallest canine pack of Kiiote –
six; and the smallest camelid herd of Yown’Hoo – eleven, a prime number. 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. Grendl, Manitoba is one such
place. No one but the Triad Company has ever heard of it and the physical plant
goes by the unobtrusive name of Organic Prairie Dairy.
The Triads never hear of anything they aren’t spoon fed
in their luxury worlds. surrounded by a Humanity that has degenerated into a
“duck-and-cover” society as the Big Boys fight their war. They don’t care about
anything but their own lives. Oblivious, cocooned, manipulated, they have no
idea that their privileges are about to be violently curtailed.
I stared at Dao-hi, the Yown’Hoo herd mother. Qap and Xurf,
the Kiiote pack leaders also looked up at me from their four-footed
configuration.
Even Shayla lifted an eyebrow.
I nodded slowly then said, “This game’s gonna have to
continue without us. We’re getting out of town no matter how we manage it.”
Dao-hi said, “While I agree with you, Car, I can’t see how
we can leave this city without some sort of transportation. As much as I would
like to run free, I can’t see that we can make the distance to the outskirts without
being captured.”
Qap said, “The northern edge of Elk River – the generally
accepted outermost border of this city – is nearly forty kilometers from here.
Even running hard, the Herd would barely make it by morning.” She looked
around, “I suspect that we should cease movement before then and create a plan.”
“We’re exposed right now, let’s get under cover before we
talk about this anymore,” I said. There were houses lining the street we were
on, though only about half of them had lights. That didn’t mean the others were
abandoned. Humans still lived in houses even after they’d been kicked out.
Qap and Xurf sent Qil, Fax, Doj, and Towt scouting. No doubt
about it, like their Earthly analogues, the dogs, foxes, and wolves, Kiiote had
the best sniffers in the Near Arm of the galaxy.
Which is where they came from, the Herd came from and where
we live. There’s some suspicion that some other, weirder aliens live somewhere
in the Arms or the Interstice – I heard someone talking about a Hive civilization
that measured its intelligence by how many of them there were. Someone else
said they looked like cockroaches, though. Not sure I’d want to meet them in a
dark alley! I read one time on a rLife post that there might be weirder stuff
out there – maybe even aliens that make the Triad cooperative look like a bunch
of shrews scuttling around while tyrannosaurs danced a jig on their heads.
The Pack pups came back. Doj said, “There’s a house that no
one lives in now and that nothing died in recently.” No reason for me to ask
how they knew that. We’d been a Triad long enough to know that ‘e was right –
we use that personal pronoun because Doj and Towt haven’t sexed yet. Qil’s a
female, Fax another male, though neither one has ever been bred by Qap and Xurf.
They’re waiting to meet the Packs from the other two Triads. The leaders paused
at the edge of the house’s yard and Dao-hi did, too, motioning Shayla and me
ahead.
This was our turf, our world, our people.
One of the first things we learned in Triad was that we had
to respect each other. No dominance. No proving our bravery or whatever. That
kind of shit was what had thrown the Kiiote and the Yown’Hoo at each other’s
throats. It’s what threatened Earth now. It’s what we were formed to shatter.
Problem is, Tribe, Pack, and Herd have different ways of
interpreting the world.
Shayla and me scuttled along the overgrown green wall surrounding
the house. It was a standard Twen-Cen style – from the looks of it, it was
originally early Twen-Cen; maybe it was a mansion a long time ago. Once it’d had
a lawn and been surrounded by pruned bushes. It was basically a heap now. Even
as a pile of boards though, there could still be someone living in it. We needed
to sneak up on them from behind.
We split around it, going an extra house over even though the
neighboring houses were both dark as well. This one had had a big yard, as if
it had tried to push everything else aside and dominate the neighborhood. Shayla
was waiting when I reached the corner of the lot. I was near a garage. I took a
gamble and slipped along the wall to where a rectangular black hole opened
where a window had been once. I stared, opening my eyes wide.
Shay and me had been enhancesd when we joined the Triad. We
still looked Human – and we weren’t as great the Herd or Pack at smelling and
hearing, but our vision was unparalleled even among the Human Tribe. We could
see farther into the infrared and UV than any other Humans on Earth. Shay said
she could even sometimes see the fuzziness of radio waves. Me? I could sense
magnetic and electrical fields. I saw them as phosphor sparkles overlaying my
regular vision.
In the garage, I caught red sparkles – that meant there was
something in there that was magnetic, and the only metal we knew of that could
be magnetized was iron. The shape was weird, though when I recognized it, I
whispered, “Bikes?”
Shay was hissing like a leaky tire across the back of the
house. I stepped back and signaled to her and we slithered over a rusting
chain-link fence and into the yard.
It was NOT overgrown, rather it had been plowed and cultivated!
How had Doj not smelled this? Clearly Humans lived here...
A deep, gruff voice said from the darkness, “One move
stranger and you’ll have a perforated ulcer – from the outside in.” The threat
was emphasized by the sharp sound of the pump action of a shotgun.
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