Everyone Thinks They're Human
By Edward McKeown
Tasca the Hunter moved on all fours, as was the way of the People. His lean body was a smoke-colored gray, blending well with the predawn grayness. Today he was not engaged in the hunt for food, but for something far more important—knowledge, the knowledge to weld his solitary people into something greater, and to make him great among them.
He was not yet born when the big ones came to his desert world. Strange beings many times the height of the People, they seemed at best, indifferent to his kind. Tasca believed they meant his kind no active harm, but some of the People had come to grief, crushed by the strange, bellowing, animals the giants sometimes rode. The others now avoided the giants, giving them a wary, respectful distance. Only he ventured near.
Lately he had begun to suspect the bellowing things were not alive, but something new, something like the rocks he strode on, yet animated. They were something the giants made. It told him of powers, ways of thinking undreamed of by his solitary people.
Tasca shivered, not just from the predawn coolness. The old ones told of brilliant flashes and a burning wind of the giants making, in the desert flats beyond the low hills he lived in. The terrible blasts had not come again, but he saw the awful, mushroom-shaped clouds of the old ones stories in his dreams.
For this, he dared the valley of the tall ones for the tenth time. Each time he moved among them, he felt he was coming close to the truth. The Giants gave him food and drink the last time. They spoke to him in their incomprehensible tongue. He tried to make them understand the speech of the People. For all the time spent together, no communication had yet occurred. In an effort to achieve a breakthrough, he even suffered their hands on him, to his surprise the sensation had not been unpleasant.
Now, he could see the home of the giants, a structure hewn from earth and stone. A giant was coming out, the same one that laid hands on him yesterday. It made a soft calling sound and slowly came down from its two-legged stance, to a less intimidating height. It reached out a hand, a curious hand, furless, with blunt, almost vestigial claws, so unlike his own. Tasca suffered the touch on his head, neck and back. As before, it was not unpleasant and the rhythm of it seemed to keep the big creature’s attention on him. The giant left briefly, returning with food and precious clean water. Tasca ignored the food, intent on his mission, but took the water with relief, the journey here had not been easy.
Tasca repeated the sounds he had made the other day, simple speech of the People, the sounds of a child. He knew the being before him was intelligent, perhaps omnipotent, yet speech seemed to elude it. When it could be coaxed into repeating a sound, it came back without meaning. After a while the creature seemed to lose interest in the lesson and him. It towered up back on two legs. Tasca did not even dare a growl of frustration as his plans of empire collapsed. Damn, he thought, for a second, just for a second, I thought we were getting somewhere.
** **
Colonel T. Kemp Sander, Delta Force, US ARMY stood, finished with petting the scarred tomcat. He didn’t seem as interested in food today, looking up intently at Sander.
"What’s up warrior?" he asked the cat, looking in amusement at the tom. It stared at him intently, then meowed repeatedly.
"Did you say something, sir?" asked Lt. Daley. The tall ranger came out of the bunker.
"Just talking to my new friend," said Sander.
"Get any answer, sir?" laughed Daley.
"May have better luck with him then with them," said Sander, a touch of grimness in his tone. Both men turned looking out toward the 100 acre silver dome that the aliens had placed in the New Mexico flat-lands near Los Alamos. Bunkers like the one they manned were sprinkled around the perimeter, manned by Delta Force, Navy Seals and even some SAS from the UK. Civilian scientists rounded out each team. Right now they had Beverly Gulden with them. The lady physicist was laboring over her instruments in the bunker, cursing some shortcoming monotonously.
There had been no sign of hostility from the aliens, indeed they seemed unconcerned with humanity. Occasionally, the five-meter tall, tripodial, insectoid, aliens left the dome, piling strange objects on the plain. Beverly spent endless hours pouring over the devices, if devices they were, to no avail.
Suddenly the small, intense woman was rushing out. "Power spike," she yelled, "it’s coming out!"
** **
Lennedle the Quint, strode out of the habitat onto the plain, his mate had become insistent about his removal of the glarb from the habitat. His six mouths grumbled, but not in the range of the ultrasonic she might hear. The silver force curtain parted as he approached it with a load. Then he was out under the system’s small yellow primary, shivering a bit in its inadequate heat. He turned toward the dump and was delighted to see three of the small bipeds scampering about the foosh and glarb. Playing with the small bipeds was a secret vice, his mate would doubtless see it was a waste of time she could fill with more valuable tasks.
The creatures gestured for his attention and he paused as they flash lights and squeak barely audible noises. He watched them for a few minutes in contentment, than drew out a few pieces of choice glarb and placed them near the bipeds. They seized on them avidly. He quickly sent a thought pulse to deactivate a deedle that one of the bipeds was playing with, before it could destroy itself. Cute, he thought, but unintelligent, with no awareness of the Quaren, the mind force. After a few more seconds, Lennedle the Quint, lumbered back toward the force curtain, wondering if there was some way he might convince his mate that one or two of them would make wonderful pets.
** **
"Damn," cursed Beverly with feeling, watching the immense tripodial alien hover back toward the silver dome, "I thought for a second, just for a second, we were getting somewhere."
