We Are Legion (We Are Bob)

Book 5: Chapter 40: Going In

Book 5: Chapter 40: Going In

Howard

September 2343

Jabberwocky

Today was the day. We’d received the cultural and language files from the Gamers, and they’d been uploaded to the drannies. Now Bridget and I were having a strategy session. We sat in our apartment in front of her computer. The Canvas displayed several overlapping windows, including a global map of Jabberwocky and several relief maps and images of dragon villages.

“This is a good place to start,” she said, pointing to a spot on the virtual globe. “High enough population density that we won’t stand out. Good weather—I have no desire to wait out one of their tropical storms, thank you very much. There are several floaters”—Bridget couldn’t help a slight wince as she said the word—“with more than one village on them. Diversity builds tolerance. I want to find out more about this warlord character—he’s the Alexander the Great wannabe that’s supposedly causing a lot of flux.”

“But this is a cultural and xenopological expedition, right?” I gave her a side-eye. “We’re not going to get involved, right?”

Bridget sighed. “I hope not, Howard. The Bobs do have a habit of sticking their noses into things, though.”

“You’re not a Bob.”

“I am an honorary Bob.” She smiled at me. “I am as nosy as any of you.”

“I, uh, I have no idea how to respond to that in a way that won’t get me punched.”

She punched me anyway.

“Ow!” I rubbed my shoulder. “No fair.”

Bridget grew serious again. “Howard, the Bobs decided a long time ago that the Prime Directive is a load of hooey when a species is in existential danger. I’m not sure if the dragons are at that level of risk or if this is just another war that will someday be a historical footnote. But some of the observations from Mario and comments in the Gamer files make me nervous.”

“Okay, Bridge, got it. Let’s go in, snoop a lot, and figure out if we need to call in the Bobs.” She made a face at me, and I grinned back. Then I stood, held out my arm, and said, “Shall we?”

*****

I stood in the cargo doorway, Bridget beside me. The landscape of Jabberwocky spread out before us in all its primitive, undeveloped glory. This time, we were fully geared up, each wearing one of the dragon frontpacks—like a backpack, but worn over the stomach. The dragon physiology made backpacks a questionable design decision, but you still had to carry stuff.

We’d considered but decided against spears, or any kind of overt weapon. We each had a knife on our belt, but that was about as noteworthy on Jabberwocky as car keys were back on 20th-century Earth.

“Are you ready?” Bridget asked. “Once we start, this is a full-time gig, except when the drannies are supposed to be sleeping.”

“I’ve taken care of all our business dealings, Bridge. I’m good to go.”

“We’ll be heading for a relatively large floater, one with several villages on it. Hopefully we’ll be able to get lost in the population size.”

“We’re staying in the one place?”

“No, of course not. Just long enough to get our balance. And to find out about that patrol that chased us last time.” Bridget’s expression darkened. “I want to know if that’s still going on.”

I nodded, then made a you first gesture. Interestingly, the translation software converted it to a motion with my tail. It was probably human chauvinism talking, but it struck me as a little obscene. Bridget didn’t seem bothered, though, and did a graceful dive off the edge. I admired her lines for a moment, then followed. Bridget held the dive for several seconds before opening her wings and arcing upward. I followed, not especially trying to catch up. At the top of her arc, she pulled in her wings, whooped, and did a backflip before settling into a proper glide.

I pulled up beside her and grinned. “Addicting, isn’t it?”

She smiled back at me. “Quin was fun. This is incomparable. I wonder if we could put wings on hueys.”

“No, of course—” I stopped midsentence. Why not, exactly? I looked behind me. Well, if I remembered right, a tail of some kind was required for control and balance. But something could be rigged. Or we could just go with dragon physiology, since we already seemed to have it on lock. Of course, there were the issues of gravity and—

“Earth to Howard. Come in, Howard.” I started and glanced at Bridget, who was trying and not quite succeeding in not laughing at me. “You went into Bob-fugue. Were you analyzing the engineering or the profitability?”

“I plead the Fifth. Or whatever it is these days. But the engineering. Profitability is a given, I think.”

“It’s still the Fifth, Howard. It’s just a saying now. I doubt most people know what it refers to. I had to look it up myself.”

We flew in silence for a few minutes, unconsciously taking advantage of updrafts whenever possible. The dragon vision seemed to have some kind of sensitivity to polarized light that made updrafts visible. Made sense; it would be a survival characteristic. The dragons could put on good speed when they needed to, but they were large and heavy for a flier, and therefore long-distance gliders by nature when updrafts were available. I wondered if they used to migrate or something similar in their prehistory. I’d have to ask Bridget.

I spotted a lake below that didn’t seem to be steaming or roiling. “Want to try a little fishing?”

Bridget looked where I was pointing and wordlessly banked in that direction. “The Gamers will have programmed in fishing reflexes, but remember, they’ve only been tested in VR. Take it easy the first time in.”

“That’s me, Mister Conservative,” I replied with a laugh, and swooped in low. Dragon eyes were adapted for seeing through the water’s surface as well. I dipped a little lower and spotted something coming up in my flight path. The dragon reflexes took over, putting me into a stall as my feet reached out, claws extended.

I hit the water face-first with a thunderous splash. Coming up spitting and coughing, I looked up to see Bridget grinning at me.

“You caught a submerged log, Mister Conservative. Or it caught you. Come on up and try again.”

Getting out of the water wasn’t easy, even for dranny muscles. It wasn’t a case of getting waterlogged, more an issue of drag preventing me from getting up enough speed to lift off.

“I’m not hungry anyway,” I said. “Maybe some other time.”

“We should both do it at least once, Howard, just in case we have to perform in front of real dragons. Practice makes perfect.” And with that, she circled around for another pass. I followed, muttering under my breath.

We swooped down in parallel and hit targets at almost the same instant. I came up with a lovely trout in one claw. I held it up to Bridget, who had come up empty.

“Don’t you dare gloat,” she said.

“Wouldn’t dream of it. I’m going to settle on the shore while you give it another shot. Practice makes perfect.”

I received a black glare, which I studiously ignored, and settled onto a rock outcropping. The fish was still alive and flipping desperately in my grip. I really didn’t need the food, so I tossed it back into the water. Meanwhile, Bridget had been more successful on her second pass and came to a landing beside me. She smiled and flipped her own fish back.

I settled into the crouch that was the dragon equivalent of an indolent sprawl. “It’s a pretty good life. Makes me wonder why the dragons bothered to become intelligent.”

“I agree, Howard, and certainly I or someone else will be studying them in the long term to answer that question. But I’m sure the environment of Jabberwocky has something to do with it. This is a harsh place to live.”

I nodded thoughtfully. Other than some miscellaneous islands, the planet’s land surface was concentrated in two continents, which Mario had named Atlantis—where the dragons were situated—and Lemuria to the west. A huge stretch of ocean reminiscent of the Pacific took up about a third of the globe to the west of Lemuria. I had to agree with Bridget that he wasn’t putting a lot of effort into names. But his interests were pretty focused.

“Mario told us that Atlantis is far more tectonically active than the other landmass,” I mused. “I suppose that could have played a part in evolutionary pressure.”

Bridget laughed. “Listen to you, sounding all biologist-ey. But yes, you’re right.” She stood. “Well, lunch hour is over. We should find a place to stay.”

*****

“Floater ahead. Locals call it the Hunter.” Bridget paused, internally accessing her notes. “The villages are Hunter’s Heaven, Hunter’s Rest, and Hunter’s Glory. Usually just referred to as Heaven, Rest, and Glory.”

“No theme there, no sirree.”

“Most floaters only have one village. This particular one is very old. They keep growing, apparently, as long as they live.”

“What kills a floater? Do they have natural enemies?”

“They have no predators. There are some species of plants and trees that are parasitic rather than commensal or symbiotic. The most common causes of death actually are volcanism and lightning. Jabberwocky has a pretty mild climate overall, and volcanoes don’t just spring up overnight, but on the other hand, floaters aren’t really powered fliers. They have kind of a sail thing underneath, but only minimal propulsion capability. So they can’t get out of the way of a storm or an eruption.”

“Hmm. Lightning. Hydrogen. Bad combo. Bet it’s spectacular, though.”

I stopped talking as I spotted our destination in the distance. Floating serenely through a low point between rolling hills, the floater was literally an island in the sky. I could see the sail that Bridget had mentioned, fully extended at the moment beneath the behemoth like a giant keel. Also dangling down were something like long vines, which seemed to move around in the wind. Occasionally, they dragged along the ground, then would retract into the bulk of the floater. Eating? Drinking? Was it snagging vegetation or little animals? Once again, Bridget would know. I glanced at Bridget and saw her frowning. Was she wondering the same thing?

The top of the floater was shaped somewhat like the top half of a bagel. Forest ran in a ring around a central depression, which was usually filled with water. The central reservoir was both a source of drinking water for the dragons and a place to keep and raise fish stock, although the dragons weren’t particularly disciplined about it. The lake was also a water source for the floater and a quick way to make more hydrogen on demand.

I knew from the reading I had done that most of the trees were symbiotic with the floater. They provided nourishment in return for a place literally in the sun. Some trees were in a more parasitic relationship, as Bridget had mentioned, and those could easily be spotted by the reaction of the floater’s surface, forming a sort of angry hummocked blister around the plant. Dragons did their part for their home by preferentially using those trees as building material and fuel.

So yeah, fuel. On a hydrogen gasbag, they had open flames. I was extremely interested in seeing how this did not result in a Hindenburg-level disaster. I imagined there had to be rules, probably very strictly enforced.

We came in low and did a hard upward arc at the last moment, dropping onto the edge of the floater with almost zero momentum. It seemed like a better system than what blue-footed boobies used, which often involved face-plants as a braking device. Yes, I watched a lot of YouTube back when I was alive.

A squad of five dragons immediately marched over to us and pointed spears in our direction. “Home floater?” one said. Then, before I could even respond, “Reason for visit?”

I opened my mouth to answer, but Bridget beat me to it. “Who’s asking?”

The spokesdragon cocked her head, more like an owl than a human, and paused, considering Bridget for a moment. Then, apparently deciding not to be offended, she replied, “Have you been living under a rock? Alexander’s army has been seen within fifty miles of here. We’ve intercepted scouts several times a day. If he’s targeting this area, we need to be ready for him. Thus, my very reasonable questions.”

“Yeahhhh, okay. We’re”—Bridget inclined her head in my direction, a move that acknowledged my existence while simultaneously dismissing me as insignificant—“from a floater about three hundred miles east. Nirvana. It’s a college town. We decided to head west until we hit the western ocean. This Alexander is news to us. Seems like kind of a local problem.”

Spokesdragon gave Bridget a look of disbelief but apparently didn’t feel like making the effort to explain. “And reason for visit?”

“Sleep. Rest. We don’t need anything. We’ve been able to catch trout along the way.”

Spokesdragon frowned. “Really? Most people report the pickings being extremely slim these days.”

“Most people are probably impatient,” Bridget replied archly. “You can winkle them up to the surface with some bait, but it takes commitment.” She patted her frontpack meaningfully.

The other dragon glanced down, following the movement, then shrugged. “Y’know, if you can demo that technique, you can probably get people to pay you for lessons.”

I queried the translation software and database. Pay was not quite the right word. Dragons didn’t have an official monetary system, at least not anything standardized. Not surprising with no centralized government authority of any kind. So everything was barter. But metal was rare enough to be prized, and various kinds of metal coins formed a sort of de facto standard of exchange. Their weight and size varied all over the place, of course, with no central authority to mint them. Value was based on weight, and coins were as likely as not to be melted down to make something practical. It was noteworthy that adulterating coins was one of the few crimes that would net you the death penalty here—often at the hands of an angry mob.

Bridget didn’t respond, instead nodding toward the village. At a gesture from Spokesdragon, the squad stepped aside, and we proceeded on our way. “Don’t make trouble,” she said to our backs.

“Not really much of a third degree,” I commented to Bridget in a low voice. “I’d say security could use an upgrade.”

“Dragons have very good hearing and smell,” she replied. “Some individuals have a reputation for being able to literally smell a liar and can probably hear a raised heart rate. Like an old-fashioned lie detector. It’s an actual job description, which”—Bridget paused to check the database—“the Gamers have translated as Sooth Hunter. I imagine the group leader was one of those.”

I mentally rolled my eyes. “Why not just lie detector?”

“Gamers,” Bridget replied. “Why are you surprised?”

Fair enough. The Gamers had been going further and further down the rabbit hole since the Heaven’s River episode, only emerging in public for really interesting things, like xenopological analyses. There was a meme going around where Gamers get dropped into a black hole and don’t even notice for months.

The town was large but ramshackle, there obviously being no building code or zoning bylaws. It also didn’t limit itself to a single level, since dragons were very much arboreal. Businesses that needed terra firma clustered on the ground while everything else snaked its way up trees in all directions, either attached to the trunk or branches or suspended by ropes. It seemed like anarchy, but a few seconds of examination revealed an underlying order. This was a medieval village built in three dimensions. There were even hotels of a sort, which mostly consisted of suspended pods with access to running water, both hot and cold. It was interesting that when sentients built a civilization, one of the first things they did was engineer for running water. There was probably a PhD thesis in there somewhere, but I’d leave that for someone else.

Bridget had mentioned that dragon towns ranged from medieval village to Renaissance city in both size and knowledge. There actually was a city named Nirvana, and it actually was a college town—something Bridget had picked up through one of the spy drones.

The dragon civilization was very old and relatively static. They had apparently achieved a level of technology that was comfortable, and settled in. The towns on this floater could be hundreds of years old and probably hadn’t changed much in all that time.

We had an unlimited supply of money, of course, since we could just order more from the drone. It was a far cry from the situation in Heaven’s River, and I intended to enjoy the freedom—starting with a covered sleeping berth and hot water.

The water wasn’t piped to each pod but was accessible in a central area. It came from a containment vessel higher up in the trees, which produced water pressure from a gravity feed. The hot water was more accurately described as warm, but it seemed to be heated using solar heating of clay pipes painted black. These people, for all that they were barely past the Stone Age in many ways, were not by any means stupid. In fact, they seemed to be quite clever at ad hoc engineering.

The hotel proprietor, a crusty old curmudgeon of a dragon, took payment and pointed us to a room with a liberal dose of opinion at no charge. The flow didn’t seem to have any logical cohesion, just a spew of complaints about everything, including the weather; the quality, size, and quantity of trout being caught; volcanic activity; and so on. But eventually he ran down, and we made our escape.

The pods were suspended in a row below a stout branch of a tree. And these trees were huge. In the lower gravity and thicker atmosphere of Jabberwocky, they grew tall, wide, and strong. You could walk along most of the main branches and even squeeze past people going in the opposite direction. The clawed feet also allowed a good grip on the tree bark, so going a little off vertical wasn’t really a problem.

I inspected the pod close up and realized it was anchored both to the branch above and to a weighted net below so that movement and swaying were kept to a minimum, especially when landing or launching. Again, pretty good engineering when they needed it.

We settled in, doffing our frontpacks, and I took a moment to examine the interior. This pod was literally like a giant birdhouse, with a single opening for a door and some holes for ventilation. A spongy floor material completed the décor and functioned as a bed. I checked the database out of curiosity. Private residences tended to be similar, with different rooms suspended individually. Families would usually own all or part of a branch.

Out the front door, the sun of Jabberwocky was just sinking below the horizon. I couldn’t get a complete view with all the foliage and other construction, but what I could see was spectacular. I remembered the sunsets on Vulcan, which were also mind-blowing, and wondered if perhaps that was simply the natural order of things. Maybe humans had gotten used to a pale, insipid version back on old Earth.

Bridget patted the floor beside her, and I took the hint. We curled up like a couple of cats, which seemed to be the normal dragon sleeping habit for couples. “Tomorrow I want to examine the floater tendrils. I have a theory … ” she said, wiggling to get comfortable.

I grunted, content to do whatever she wanted. I closed my eyes; then we left the drannies on auto and returned to our mannies in Trantor.