THREE
The grezzen peered out across the clearing at the human, as tiny as Buford, who brought his meals, but pale. Unlike Buford, this one was uncovered by the stiff shell in which humans normally wrapped themselves before they came close to him.
Even unshelled like this one, the little bipeds were visually indistinguishable. Even their sexual dimorphism was unobvious, unless one peeled away the artificial integument in which they wrapped themselves. And that was scarcely worth the energy expended because, at least according to those of his race who had sampled humans, the females were as bony and tasteless as the males.
He flexed his limbs until his belly brushed the ground, then peered at this one. No tiny mammaries pushed against its ventral integument, which was patterned in multiple colors. Its lower jaw was smudged, a recurring condition the humans called “five o’clock shadow” for incomprehensibly complex reasons. Male.
The human extended one forelimb behind himself, with one digit extended, toward the smoke and the human shell the grezzen had trampled. “Not exactly a people person today, are we, Mort?” The human audibilized the thought, tiny mouth opening and closing as though eating, but the grezzen understood without the auditory cue.
The grezzen also felt the human’s inner fear, of which the little biped gave no outward sign. The fear was understandable. The grezzen’s current intemperate rage created the very real apprehension that he might kill any human who came near him.
The grezzen responded to the human without sound. “I have not eaten people in years. Ha-ha.”
His response relaxed the human, as intended, and the little creature audibilized, “Not funny. Better. But your joke-telling skills need more work.”
“I felt it was you, Jazen.”
“You’ve made a mess here, Mort.”
“You know why. I felt you communicate with John Buford.”
Jazen tilted his head forward and back. The grezzen understood that this indicated agreement. Humans communicated by patterned sound, but also by body displays, much like prey animals did.
Jazen raised a tiny white leaf in front of his eyes with one hand while he pointed at it with the other. “You eavesdropped on Buford while he was reading the news on his handheld. But Mort, when the news is bad, you can’t just kill the messenger.”
The grezzen rocked back on his third legs, a pose humans used to communicate affront. “And I did not! John Buford tried to burn me with the fire stinger, so I removed it. That is all I did.”
“All? You know what a hellcat costs?”
The grezzen dropped back onto all six. Cost. Grezzen had no need for tools, much less a system by which to value them. Humans, however, valued the tools they communally created and shared, like the hellcat. Only by community and tools had a species so tiny and fragile survived. It was but one reason the little creatures fascinated him. “Perhaps I over-reacted.”
Jazen swiveled his head, pointed his foreclaw at the vast expanse of spoiled and burned vegetation that surrounded them. “Ya think? And you scared John shitless.”
“Such news would have upset any individual of normal intelligence and sensibility.”
“John doesn’t know you have intelligence and sensibility! To him you’re just a big dog.”
The grezzen extended his forelimb and pointed a claw at the leaf. “Read the rest for me. Of the news that John Buford was learning from the leaf.”
Jazen crossed his forelimbs, shook his head. This indicated both displeasure and intransigence. “You’re a goddam telepath. Go find a mind that’s not pissed off at you and read it yourself.”
“You know it does not work like that.”
How it worked, in fact, was that Dead End’s entire grezzen population, the tiny apex atop that planet’s predation pyramid, were telepathically connected in real time, cousin-to-cousin, like ‘puters wired to a single server. Mort accessed his grandfather’s memories as easily as his own, and saw, heard and smelled what any other grezzen experienced whenever he chose.
But with other species, Mort couldn’t rummage through individuals’ memory banks. He could only see, hear, feel, sense what any individual did, in the moment. As if that individual wore a head-cam with earpiece, and Mort could access the feed anytime he wished.
Grezzen attacked and defended using sight and sound and smell when convenient. And fell back on their gift when they chose. Evolution had upgraded them from physically dominant predators to lords of their world.
However, when eavesdropping on aliens in an alien world, Mort’s gift underperformed.
“Jazen? Please?” The grezzen stroked the old scar tissue on his face where the kerosene rain had burned him. “If not for me, for the memory of my mother.”
Invoking his dead mother, killed by humans, was a tactic he had learned from the humans. They used it to induce sympathy in another. Although neither party moved in any direction, it was called a guilt trip.
Jazen expelled breath, indicating reluctant assent. The humans called it a sigh. “If I do, you’ll calm down?”
The grezzen lay on his back, laced the claws of four limbs across his belly, then remained motionless, like an inanimate vegetable. “There. I am as calm as a cucumber.”
“Cool. Cool as a cucumber.”
“As you prefer.”
Then Jazen raised the leaf again, drew a foreclaw across its surface, and spoke.
“Turn in Tale of Tarnished Tycoon. Once the fourth richest man on Earth, and majority shareholder in its largest communications conglomerate, Bartram Cutler was serving the second year of a twenty-two-year sentence after conviction on criminal charges that remain sealed on national security grounds. That changed yesterday when Cutler’s name appeared on the outgoing administration’s list of midnight pardons—”
The grezzen raised one foreclaw. “I came here only because you and Kit told me that Cutler would be restrained because of his misdeeds. You, and so I, have just learned that you said that which is not.”
Jazen pointed a foreclaw at the grezzen. “We didn’t lie to you! Being wrong about the future’s not lying. Just because telepaths don’t know how to lie doesn’t mean you can’t understand the difference. You know humans by now.”
The grezzen did indeed know humans, at least his humans, now. He did not know when, precisely, he had begun thinking of Jazen and Kit as “his.” Nor did he know when he, a being who lived his adult life, save for mating, apart from others of his kind, came to enjoy proximate interaction with these two frail creatures.
Jazen made another tiny exhalation. “You think I like it? You felt my anger when John read it for me, didn’t you?”
The grezzen nodded. “I did. However, I have left my home and come to this place in reliance upon what you said. I have remained here because of what you said. I have endured bland food and miserable climate and the poking and prodding of the nerds at The Barn.” He stroked his old scar tissue again. “To say nothing of the attempts to burn me alive.” The grezzen turned his mouth up at its corners. “Ha-ha.”
Jazen’s tiny facial muscles mimicked the grezzen’s in response. “I was wrong. Your sense of humor’s improving. But remember, if you hadn’t come to Earth with us, Cutler would have killed half your cousins by now. Just like he killed your mother. And he would have enslaved the rest of you. He’s a bad human. Unfortunately, we have lots of those.”
The grezzen raised and lowered his chin in a human nod. “And so I have been content to endure the nerds. But now Cutler is unrestrained. He killed my mother and now he is out there somewhere.” He raised up on his back two and stared toward the distant perimeter fence, invisible beyond the trees. “That should not continue.”
Jazen’s small eyes widened and he raised both foreclaws and turned their inner surfaces toward the grezzen, as though he were pushing against a tree trunk. “Don’t even think about it!” He pointed with a foreclaw at the boundary which could not be seen from here. “Mort, you cross outside that fence and the villagers’ll go torches and pitchforks on you.”
The grezzen stroked his face again, where the kerosene had burned him, then shook his head vertically to punctuate. “Yes. Villagers. I understand. Humans acting together are even more dangerous than a human acting alone.”
“More powerful, yes. More dangerous? Not usually. Mostly, when humans act together, it’s to do something good. You like the London Symphony.”
“I do. But the Yavi act together. The nerds who study me act together. Unlike the musicians of the London Symphony, the Yavi and the nerds wish to kill the other not for food.”
“War brings out the worst in both sides. Some Yavi are very bad. But I was raised on Yavet. Most Yavi have nothing to do with what makes the others bad. And maybe a few of the nerds are bad. But most of them are like Kit and me. They just want to protect your race and understand your gift, not weaponize it.”
“If Cutler and the bad Yavi acted together, they would be very dangerous.”
The corners of Jazen’s mouth turned up again, and he shook his head horizontally. This signaled indulgent disagreement. “Cutler’s a Trueborn. The bad Yavi hate Trueborns. Especially rich jerk Trueborns. And even jerk Trueborns like Cutler hate the Yavi.” Jazen pointed a foreclaw at the woog, dead and warm in the distance. Already a cloud of scavenging local insects rendered its outline indistinct. “Mort, if Cutler and the Yavi ever act together, I’ll eat a rotten woog, flies and all.”