The Search · Part 1

The Search · Part 1 (1/2)
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The Star Fleet

Series

The

Search

The Amalgamation Survey Ship

Interloper moved in a synchronous orbit above the fifth planet of star

E27182818. A young woman entered the Captain's office and saluted. "Lieutenant

Erig reporting as ordered, Captain."

Captain Goda returned her salute. "At ease, Lieutenant. This ship has been ordered to do a surface search of this planet to look for possible survivors of a star ship explosion.

I have summoned you because I need an experienced field surveyor, someone who is used to dealing with a possibly dangerous culture. Strictly speaking this is not a field survey, because it will be generations before this planet is ready for membership in the Amalgamation. However, there are some unusual and so far unexplained features that it would be worthwhile examining for academic reasons, not that we would have a chance to do so if it hadn't been for this search."

"You want me to search the whole planet, Captain? Or do we have a starting point? How do we know that there are any survivors?" Erig hoped she hadn't sounded too sarcastic.

"An escape pod beacon was tracked to this planet. We have located the pod in 30 meters of water about

200 meters from the shore of a large lake, and it seems to be intact. The pod beacon stopped when it went into the water, but a brief signal from a personal communicator was detected later, so we know that someone got out of the pod."

"How many people are we looking for, Captain?"

"We don't know for sure.

Eight people and two pods, including this one, are still missing."

"How long has it been since the pod landed, Captain?"

"Nine days."

"What do we know about the planet's culture, Captain?"

"All we know is what we've got from images of the surface." Captain Goda manipulated her computer and an image was displayed on the wall screen. "Here is the largest town in the region. As you can see, it is typical of an early bronze age culture.

One unusual feature is that most of the buildings appear to be partially dug into the ground." She displayed another image. "This is the main plaza in the town in the middle of the day. Do you see anything unusual?"

"Well, Captain, the crowd seems to be mostly children."

"Yes. And there aren't any adult men. All of the adults are women."

"It's hard to tell for sure, Captain, but all of the smaller figures appear to be about the same height.

If they were children there should be more variation. I think those people are pygmies!"

"You may be right. Another interesting feature to examine, if you can. But the primary purpose of this mission is to determine if there are any survivors, and rescue them if they can be found."

Captain Goda warned, "This is a dangerous assignment. As usual, we are short of resources. This ship won't be able to stay here, so you will be on your own. We'll leave a shuttle in orbit, so you and any survivors will have a safe place to live until the ship returns, but that's all we can do. Report to the Xenologist for your costume and equipment and for any more information he might have.

And the best of luck. Dismissed."

Erig saluted and left the cabin. She walked to the Xenologist's compartment and knocked on the door.

It opened and she was engulfed by a hug and a passionate kiss.

When he could talk the Xenologist said, "Pami! Don't tell me that you're the one they picked for this suicide mission!"

"Yeah, Thar, I'm the one.

Thanks for the encouraging words."

"It may not be that bad, but it is much riskier than most surveys. We don't know much about the culture except that it's primitive. There's no language transplant, so it will hard for you to blend in if you get close to the inhabitants. We don't know what they use for money, so you will have to provide for yourself as best you can." He moved his hands over her body. "I'm sure you'll think of something."

She swatted his fingers and continued to discuss the assignment. "Have you seen that image of the market square? It looks to me like the shorter people are pygmies, not children.

What do you think?"

"I suppose it's possible, but it would be unusual for two races that are so different to be living in the same towns. If you find out what's happening you can get a technical paper out of it."

Thar picked up an aerosol can. "We have to get you ready. Strip and I'll spray this skin dye on your body so at least you'll be the same color as everyone else. Your hair and the shape of your face will need modification too."

After the cosmetics were applied Thar gave Erig a narrow strip of cloth to wrap around her hips.

She asked, "Is this all they wear? What's the climate like?"

"I've seen images that showed women wearing elaborate costumes and images that showed them naked. This is sort of the average. The climate is subtropical, so you don't need clothing to keep warm, and the skin dye has a sun block in it that will keep you from being fried. One other thing." He gave her a container. "Nobody wears shoes, so spray some of this polymer on the bottoms of your feet."

"Where's my communicator?"

Thar gave Erig a necklace made of wooden beads. "That big bead is the communicator. It works the same way they all do. Pull it against the thong to activate it, and it'll stay active as long as you hold it in your hand. Of course, you won't have anybody to talk to except for the AI that controls the shuttle."

"All I will want to say is, Get Me Out Of Here."

"Seriously, this is very dangerous. You will be operating alone on a primitive planet. I know how brave you are, so please don't take unnecessary risks."

Thar took Erig in his arms and gave her a passionate kiss. "We have some time before you can leave.

Let's go to my bed and have a good-bye party."

Erig watched a vision screen as the shuttle dropped towards the planet's surface. It was an hour before dawn, but there was enough starlight to operate the low-light camera. She could clearly see the large town that she had studied earlier, and another town about half its size. The two towns were about 30 km apart, and were connected by a road that skirted a large lake. The escape pod was close to the shore of this lake and about 10 km from the larger town. Erig decided to make this the landing point. On a more advanced planet it would be risky to operate the shuttle that close to a town, but on a primitive planet a shuttle sighting would be attributed to the gods.

Erig noticed something near the road about midway between the two towns. She switched the screen to

IR, and saw a line of bright dots. It looked like a caravan, and if it was coming towards her it might be a problem. She didn't see anything except for that, so Erig continued with the landing.

The shuttle landed close to the lake shore and Erig disembarked. It immediately rose back into the sky, and Erig felt a wave of loneliness and anxiety, but that quickly passed as she scanned her surroundings. She was about 25 meters from the road and the same distance from the lake. The vegetation was mostly short yellow grass and small bushes, and the road was the only visible human artifact.

She walked to the road, and the brightening sky now provided enough light to let her examine it. She saw that the road was little more than a track beaten out by the traffic, with no visible improvements. The surface showed the prints of bare human feet, most of them small, and a few tracks left by wheels.

Erig was surprised by what she didn't see; there were no hoof prints of any kind. She thought back to the images she had studied, and she realized that she had never seen an animal in any of them. She said to herself, "If these people don't have any domesticated animals, how could they have developed enough agriculture to support towns? You need draft animals on a farm."

Erig decided to start her search on the lakeshore. She found the prints of bare human feet in several places, but this didn't prove anything. The problem was that she didn't know exactly where the shuttle sank, and even if she did know there was a good chance the possible survivors didn't swim to the closest land. She spent almost an hour searching along the shore and found nothing.

The sun was up now, and Erig stood with it at her back. She saw a reflection from something shiny in a nearby clump of bushes, and when she searched the bushes she found the remains of a smashed personal communicator. So there were survivors on the planet. She thought, 'So much for my hope for a quick trip back to orbit.'

Erig followed some foot prints that went towards the road. She was so engrossed in her tracking that she neglected to observe her surroundings until a sound made her look up. She was about 15 meters from the road, and the caravan she had seen on the way in was passing her. She was shocked when she realized that the caravan consisted of ten naked young women, linked together by rope that connected their necks.

The women were accompanied by four small men. Although they were only a meter tall, they were definitely not children, but instead men in miniature. Each wore a loincloth and a belt pouch and carried a small bow and a quiver of arrows that were only

30 cm long. The sight of these miniature men and their toy-like weapons briefly distracted Erig, and that gave one of the men the time he needed to nock an arrow and shoot it into her thigh.

Erig felt the stab of pain and immediately pulled the arrow out of her leg. She saw that it had a blunt tip, with a thorn that extended from it about a centimeter, and that this was all that had penetrated her skin. She thought, 'That's not a very dangerous weapon.' But then she realized that her muscles were going limp.

She sat down hard, and fell onto her back.

Her immediate reaction was disgust at her ineptness. She thought, 'I must be spending too much time on the ship if these midgets can capture me this easily.'

Erig discovered that only her major muscles seemed to be affected by the poison on the arrow. She could blink her eyes and open her mouth, and as far as she could tell her breathing and heartbeat were functioning properly, but when she tried to move her arms or legs all that happened was some uncoordinated twitching.

Two of the little men proceeded to secure her wrists and ankles. The speed and skill of their actions demonstrated that they had a lot of practice, and in a few minutes Erig was bound. She followed this activity with detached amazement. The material the men used looked like rope, but she saw that it was actually some sort of vine. It was stiff, so the knots were loose, and Erig thought that it would be easy for her to untie them. Then one of the men produced a clay jar and poured a yellow liquid over the knots. The outside of the vine seemed to melt, and in a few minutes the knots had fused into a solid mass.

Erig was not tied tightly.

Her ankles were hobbled with a separation of about 40 cm. Her hands were tied in front, and there was about 10 cm of vine connecting the single loops of vine that circled each wrist. One of the men removed her bead necklace and tied a loop of vine around her neck. The free end was about

2 meters long and the man tied a small loop in this end. He used the yellow liquid to fuse the knots on these loops.

Erig thought, 'You don't want that necklace. You're going to put it back on my neck, right?'

Wrong. The man put the necklace around his own neck. Erig was worried now. Without the communicator it was going to be very difficult to tell the shuttle to pick her up.

Erig was in no hurry to get up, so she stayed on her back until a man hit her across her breasts with a thin wooden rod. She yelped and tried to curl into a ball. This demonstrated to the men that the poison had worn off, and two of them pulled her to her knees and held her while another man connected her elbows with a leather thong across her back. He pulled it tight, and her hands were now held tightly against her waist.

The little men dragged Erig to her feet and led her onto the road where the coffle of girls was waiting; the residue of the poison caused her to shuffle and stumble. One of the men removed the cloth around her hips.

A man pulled on the vine around the neck of the last girl in the coffle until she bent over. He connected Erig's leash to the loop around the other girl's neck with what seemed to be a primitive combination lock. This lock had three c-shaped rings of bronze that rotated around a c-shaped bronze sleeve. He aligned all of the openings and put the vines in the center, and 'locked' it by twisting the rings until the slots were no longer aligned.

The caravan didn't start moving right away. The four men stood together and had an animated discussion.

Erig used the time to study the other girls in the coffle. All of them were young. They had obviously gone through puberty, but she estimated that it was less than a year ago. They all seemed to be detached from the world. None of them talked, or looked around, or performed any of the expected human actions. In spite of their circumstances none of them seemed to be angry or frightened.

Erig thought, 'These girls act like they're brain dead. Were they drugged?' She felt a moment of fear when she realized how easy it would be to treat her the same way.

The men completed their discussion.

One man went down the line of girls. As he came to each girl he hit the back of her knees with his wooden rod. The girl dropped to her knees and sat back on her heels. When she was struck Erig did the same.

Two of the men took leather buckets from a pack carried by one of the girls and filled them with lake water. They went to each girl and forced her to drink a measure of water.

Again, Erig did the same. When the watering was complete and the buckets put away each girl was brought to her feet by blows on the underside of her breasts. Erig didn't like this at all, but none of the other girls showed any reaction.

More blows on thighs and buttocks got the caravan moving down the road towards the town. Erig thought, 'Thar said it would be hard for me to get close to the inhabitants and provide for myself, but I didn't have any trouble at all. Of course, I can only search as far as this tether will reach.'

The caravan's pace was set by the short legs of the men and it was slow. Even with their hobbles none of the girls had any trouble keeping up. As they got closer to the town other traffic appeared on the road. Most of it consisted of small men and small women walking alone or in groups, but once they passed a coffle of girls that looked the same as the girls with Erig. She thought, 'Why are groups of what look like identical girls being exchanged between the two towns? I wish I knew what was going on.'

A short time later Erig saw a wheeled vehicle. It was a small, four-wheeled farm wagon pulled by a team of four women. The women were paired, and each was connected to the single shaft by traces attached to a belt around her hips. A man walked in front and guided the wagon. He carried a short pole with a bronze hook on the end, and the hook was placed in a large bronze ring that pierced the nipple of one of the women at the front of the team. The women in the team were older than the girls in the coffle, but they all had the same blank expressions. All of the women had the same wrist and ankle ties as

Erig and the other girls, except that their wrist ties were fastened to the belt around their hips.

In the town the crowds thickened.

Most of the people were small, but Erig confirmed that they were mature adults and were not children. All of the normal-sized people were naked women, and all of them were either pulling vehicles or carrying packs.

Most of the women were guided by a man walking in front, but a few were controlled by reins held by a man riding in the cart.

All of the buildings Erig passed were made from mud bricks and were scaled to the size of the small people, so the roofs of the single-story buildings were at her eye level.

She could see some larger buildings near the center of the town.

The coffle entered a large, barn-like building. One of the men fastened the leash on the lead girl's neck to a ring set in the back wall of the building. Erig looked around in the dim light. Individual women were tethered to rings set either in the walls or in stone blocks buried in the dirt floor, but there weren't any other coffles. The building had a foul smell, and human waste was scattered on the floor around the location of the tether rings.

At the opposite end of the building was an auction facility, with a podium and a tier of seats around a paddock. About half of the seats were occupied, and more people were entering from outside through a small door next to the seats.

Erig heard crying from the direction of the large door that the coffle had used. She saw a man and a woman enter, each holding a hand of a large blank-faced girl. An official came up to them and talked to the man. Then he beckoned, and two other men joined the group. They detached the girl's hands from the grasp of the couple and tied her wrists and ankles. The woman hugged the girl and started to cry again, and the man also had tears running down his face.

He put his arm around the woman's shoulders and gently pulled her away from the girl and out of the building.

As Erig was watching the tragic scene, sharp eyes were watching Erig. They belonged to a middle-aged woman sitting in the top row of seats. This was Madam T'sang, proprietor of the town's largest and most successful racing stable. She nudged her companion and pointed to Erig. "Did you see that, Fou?" she asked.

"See what, Madam T?"

"The giant at the end of that coffle. It seemed to me that she might have been aware of what was happening over by the door. She is also a lot older than the girls with her, who have obviously just changed. Go talk to the auctioneer and find out what he knows about her."

Fou obediently went to the podium and questioned the auctioneer. When she returned she said, "The exchange caravan found her by the lake, Madam T. They think she was abandoned there when her parents finally admitted to themselves that she was stupefied.

It happens all the time."

"Yes, but it usually happens when the girl is a lot younger. There is something unusual about that giant.

They found here by the lake, you say? Now that is really interesting. I'm going to buy her."

"Do you think she can be a racer, Madam T?

"No, she's too old and too heavy for that, but we need another hack anyway."

Erig was one of the first giants put up for auction. None of the other bidders saw her as anything special, so Madam T'sang was able to buy her cheaply.

After she was sold Erig was led outside and tethered to a ring set in the wall of the building. She was very uncomfortable. Her elbows were still tied, and they hurt. Her hands were numb. She was hungry. And she had to pee.

She was wondering what to do about that when the woman tethered to the next ring urinated. She just released a stream of urine and stood there oblivious to the liquid running down her legs. Erig realized that squatting and wiping would tell everyone in sight what she wasn't, so she did the same. It was not a pleasant sensation.

Erig was still dripping when a chariot driven by Madam T'sang arrived. It was pulled by two women strapped into elaborate harnesses made of red leather, and Madam T'sang controlled the women with reins attached to bronze curb bits. Her chariot was followed by another containing two men. This was also pulled by two women,

The Search · Part 1 (1/2)
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