Chapter 38: The Planet of all Times, Part Two

Date unknown, ~220,000 years before the launch of the Rubicon

For weeks on end, Tafu followed the tiny waterways crisscrossing the planet, hoping the Tripodes also needed water as strangely, life seemed to follow some basic rules wherever in the Galaxy it sprung up. He was not hiding anymore, far away from the temporal tunnels there was nothing of strategic importance any marine or “the enemy” needed, just the Tripodes to be found. Weeks passed with little successes apart from Tafu sustaining himself successfully in what changed to be more steppe than desert.

The Sillerin was weighing a conundrum in his tiny decentralized brains – on one leg, he was surely not supposed to interfere with a whole population’s history, especially if they were to become important in the war to come. On another leg, his legs were forced, since “the enemy” would continue attacking through the time tunnels and he had no idea what was happening in the future – his friends might be losing badly – at least the Toucan had gone down within 20 seconds of the first shots hitting the shields, basically, as soon as the atmosphere made their cloak useless. There also was a high risk the Tripodes would be eliminated wholly before they could become the “mighty empire that invents these tunnels” Major Geronou had mentioned, meaning whatever the League’s plan was with said tunnels would collapse, as surely the League would, too, as he heard from the marines it had not being going terribly well against “the enemy”. Then again, exactly his interference with the locals could prevent them from inventing the tunnels in the first place. A very huge decision had to be made, and by a lowly ensign alone in the far past, involving the whole of the League, all of the Tripodes as well as the mysterious settlers that would eventually arrive on the planet he had been originally sent to have a look at. His loneliness on the steppe was the deciding factor in the end – although not entirely logical – he longed for company, which meant he decided to interfere after all and make sure the Tripodes were as ready as they could be, and he would give a leg up in the horrors ahead of them.

Some more days or maybe weeks passed with a lone and slightly lost Sillerin walking the steppes aimlessly, singing songs to himself to keep the spirits up. There now also were some other, pretty basic lifeforms, having likely developed from the same branch as the Tripodes, such as triangular water creatures that ate holes in plants unfortunate to be near enough the water, there were little critters – at first, he thought he had found the Tripodes’s freshlings, but these didn’t have eyes and the wrong number of legs, so he ate them. His scanners also showed microbial lifeforms in the water, basically, he could see where the Tripodes had come from, but he was wondering about a missing link between the very basic lifeforms on this planet and the much more developed – at least physically – Tripodes. Months into the voyage, he was finally getting the suspicion that he had long crossed into their territory, they were just hiding from him. He stopped at a plateau surrounded by tall mountains, several streams converging down into some valleys and decided to check if they had already developed curiosity by gathering some strange wood from their strange trees that were more like bones sticking out of the ground and building a huge statue of himself. The location wasn’t chosen by accident, converging streams usually meant settlements for most early civilizations he could look up in his guide on Exobiology 101 he now heavily relied upon. He left some observation equipment and audio equipment and waited in a nearby hill, having dug out a comfy chamber for himself. The first day, nothing happened, so he went to sleep, which turned out to be a mistake, since the Tripodes came looking at the new structure in their neighborhood at night, finally giving him clear video of the strange race, galloping by always having two legs push and one pull, like a veteran horse in a minefield. They were able to quickly turn and dash, as demonstrated as he activated some speakers playing human harp music. Some of them overcame their fear after some minutes, turned and listened – as it seemed from an observer’s perspective – to the religious human music that for some reason had been on the storage of one of the devices left behind at the base by one of the now enemy marines. He could not have known, but said marine was simply also a member of the Bacchus cult, proving it by playing Roman harp music when he got drunk, calling it a religious and therefore protected ritual, angrily defending his stockpile of alcohol.

The second night, the Tripodes brought gifts to their new temple. They were pretty useless gifts, just stones, some roots – the ones that made Tafu hallucinate, suggesting they used recreational substances, too – and, interestingly, some metal scraps left behind by earlier fights between the enemy and the marines, meaning even this more distant tribe was at least aware of the fighting and in the habit of collecting what seemed strange and new to them. Tafu was now modifying the audio, playing the Tripodes an old rhythmic Axxi verse that they didn’t understand but was supposed to test their language skills. Translated it simply meant “The only thing you can really trust is soft ground”, one of the mantras of his consortium of races. It took a while, but making it part of the melody helped them to understand what a chant or song was, they started making similar sounds.

From there, Tafu’s computer could distinguish which specific sounds or phonemes the Tripodes were able to reproduce with whatever organ they used to make sounds, so he gave them their first word: “God” which was pronounced [krtakirit]. No matter if they understood the meaning or not, after only a week, he could hear them repeat it towards the statue when he played the harp music, rhythmically interrupted by the first word this race ever learned. This made him wonder again why this race was so underdeveloped for what their brains obviously could compute, noting it in his research memories, to be found next to his dried-out corpse in the worst case. Every time they brought gifts, he would give them their second word, which was [ktakk] and was supposed to give them a good feeling whenever they dropped stones or other items next to the statue. Whenever they brought fewer items or a smaller rock, they learned [ata-a], which was supposed to show the God’s disappointment in the gift. It took a few weeks to teach them this binary meaning, but after a while, he was able to get them to bring 34% more gifts. Now, it was time for them to learn their own name, by calling them during the day – against their obvious tendency to avoid the scorching sun – and stopping when they came. It was [rakiri] and caused a lot of confusion, the Tripodes scuttling hence and forth for a long time, until they understood that they were simply being called. If they thought it meant their name or “come on over” was unclear, but it was a solid start.

Now came the unpleasant part. Tafu had figured out they lived nearby in simple mudhills stuck to the mountainsides, building their habitations atop one another, with a lot of tunnels and caverns built between them, not unlike the poorer refugees on overcrowded core planets before moving out to terraformed planets – just with less mud. They were not tunnelers like he was, they were using river clay to shelter from the hot sun during the day. And he had to get in there, which meant capturing one of them and equipping it with some audio and video equipment. Late at night – which was a longer period due to the size and slower rotation of the planet – when some of them would sit in the nearby river cooling down from a long day of building unstable mud anthills, he used the call sign [rakiri] silently to make one come closer to a location behind a larger rock dividing the river, upon which Tafu sat, all painted black now. Upon closer look, they really looked like tri-sided pyramids on little clawlike legs, with eyes poking out dead center of each side, barely able to move. Which meant this planet had no native predators yet that struck from above, or at least until the moment Tafu picked the poor Tripode up with four of his legs like the spider he was in the end and stuck some equipment onto its top, to then immediately release it. Tafu retreated to the observation chamber, the newly appointed ambassador ran to his mudhut, visibly panicked – rotating around his own axis for a while. Then, the call sign was used from the speakers atop the ambassador, the other Tripodes eagerly surrounding their mate, who was just a tad taller now, as if wearing a metal hat, something that might explain the large hats seen in many religious beliefs in many races, Tafu thought. The ambassador was confused, walking around, trying to flee the sound coming from above his eyesight. Every time he touched something, the computer would name said something. It was a huge and very surprising success, they gradually knew what to call a river, what to call themselves, what to call their various food items, which included roots, mudworms and also critters, and how to call their younglings, simply chanting after the ambassador’s involuntary teachings. But a simple system of just nouns was not enough, verbs were needed, so anytime the ambassador did something, going about his day – unnerved but without any real options – like getting mud or drinking water, each noun would get a verb attached to it. It took several weeks but one day, Tafu heard one of the others announce he was going to drink water before he went there and two others joined him. He had succeeded, but at a high cost, the ambassador soon dropped dead from the obvious stress and had to be replaced in much the same manner, continuing with the program.

Now came the risky part. He had to join their tribe as their God and Leader. He gave them some more weeks of relative peace, having them collect more metals by letting the statue call out the word for “good” each time they brought scrap. Indeed, their habit of collecting things came in handy, as he could now give each gift a name depending on its basic material. He needed metals, advanced metals, for much was to be built by the engineer for his new race. After some weeks, the statue was looking like a scrapyard, and Tafu was ready. He painted his armor in their color, which was a reddish-brown shellfish color and painted three red eyes onto himself, but also took the precaution to arrive with the helmet on. Strapped to his back was a holo emitter, playing videos of Tripodes following and shaking his legs in greeting, and of course, the harp sound that had started it all.

As he entered the night like a mobile cinema in front of the mudhuthill, they came out, first slowly, but when he told them the word for good [ktakk] and combined it with their name [rakiri], they came in droves, there had to be thousands of them in various sizes and colors ranging from more greenish to the more adult reddish-brown. There were some misunderstandings at first, his very large number of legs clearly scared them, but they were really shocked when he showed them his threads and easily swung up to the top of their mudanthill, sadly crushing three or four family homes with his weight, which identified the inhabitants of said homes quickly, since they started rotating in anger. They still weren’t ready to give him any information, as the concept of questions and answers was still unknown to them, but Tafu had found a nice tribe to live with for years. And it would take him years to show them all he knew. First, he built a well and showed them how to get to groundwater and how to filter it, as at first, they seemed to fall ill from the microbes. Then, he showed them how to build better mudhuts, by using boney wood in strategic places, especially above the entrances. He even built a mill that was milling absolutely nothing next to the river, just to show them how to make use of a river. Then, just for the fun of it and to underscore his status, he built a trebuchet and launched a rock so far it went out of sight, the crowd was loudly [rkrkrkring] in awe. There were no attempts on his life, but these also were not the warrior class he figured, as he had not seen a single spear, these were likely unaware they were drafted into a very long war by their ten-legged God. He guessed the Tripodes closer to the temporal tunnels had seen more fighting and developed some understanding of fighting before being slaughtered, but his tribe was useless at that for now.