Squatter's Rights



  Squatter’s Rights

  by

  Hollis Rentchler

  Squatter’s Rights Copyright © 2012 by Viking Horde Media

  Cover art copyright © 2012 by Alan L. Lickiss, Jacob Lickiss, and Rebecca Lickiss

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  Squatter’s Rights

  Red and orange streaked through the star-studded violet sky, promising a new day, new discoveries, and new excitement. Oxana Kharmadi sighed with satisfaction, now finished with her night’s work and more than ready to skip a little sleep to officially document her discoveries.

  In the brush and scrub to her left she heard something moving. She quickly finished packing her equipment away in her kit, and cautiously, quietly, moved to see what it was. The flora on this planet grew only just taller than the top of her head, and she’d found no fauna other than insects and tiny vertebrates.

  Except for the one time. Though she had no proof of what she thought she’d seen. She hardly believed it herself anymore. Three days ago, in the wee hours of the morning as the sun was just about to rise, she remembered seeing a half-meter tall, six-legged, spider-like animal disappearing into the thick scrub around the grassy plain she’d been researching. She’d only gotten a glance, off to the side, so she couldn’t be certain. And no one else had seen anything even remotely like it.

  Kharmadi had reported it. Though it made her sound like an idiot, and the rest of the scientific expedition had treated her as such since. The fact that this was her first exploratory expedition with the Terran Colonial Agency hadn’t helped either. The scientists kept telling her scare stories to see what she’d believe, the military branch frankly scoffed at her, and the administrators and sociologists from the Colonial Agency had become increasingly patronizing.

  Peering between the soft, fuzzy, sour-mint scented branches of fur brush, Kharmadi listened intently. Hearing a branch break farther away, she stepped out of her fur brush blind and headed toward the sound. A couple of meters away she found the broken branch.

  Something, other than herself was definitely moving through the pungent scrub. She could make out the sounds of branches slapping ahead of her.

  Slowly, making certain that she held the branches, and carefully put them back, to keep from making any noise, she followed whatever it was. Her caution slowed her and when she stepped out of the fur brush stand, she found herself alone looking out over an expanse of high-grass prairie.

  The sun was now completely up, but even with the added light she couldn’t see anything that might have been crawling through the brush. The waving, blue, waist-high grasses hid their secrets as well as an ocean.

  Not far distant were a string of rounded hillocks and mounds, that looked as if a giant mole had tunneled through the meadow, leaving behind one to two meter tall swells.

  Disappointed at losing her quarry, Kharmadi headed through the tall grass for the hills. She hadn’t seen any similar geographic features in the previous meadows. Perhaps she’d find something useful here. She topped the first hillock, and stumbled in shock, twisting her ankle and falling down the other side of the hill. She slid to a stop at the feet of what was unmistakably an alien creature.

  Whatever it was, it was humanoid, with head, torso, arms, and legs in the usual places. Its body was covered in some sort of draped toga fastened at both shoulders, over a tight suit that fitted all the way to its wrists, booted feet, and neck. Its hands had five digits; a thumb, three fingers, and another thumb on the opposite side. It had purple eyes, and its head was covered with short curly purple horns. It stood stock still, staring down at Kharmadi.

  There were other aliens in the galaxy. Kharmadi had even met some. There were a few races that helped Terrans, others just ignored them. Few seemed hostile. It seemed to be generally accepted that the universe was big enough for everyone. However, Kharmadi had never seen or heard of anything like this.

  “Hello.” As Kharmadi got to her feet, the creature hurriedly backed away, screaming, its arms going protectively around its pot-belly.

  There were shouts, and several more of the creatures came running. Some held what could only be electronic or security devices. Definitely manufactured, and of a high enough technology that Kharmadi couldn’t assume she was dealing with primitives. She was quickly surrounded.

  Most of the others appeared to be dressed like the first, though their clothing came in various colors and stylized drapings. Their eye and horn colors ranged from blue to purple, with their skin a much paler version. They appeared no more hostile than a group of Terrans with a strange, wild animal in their midst.

  She tried smiling, but no one smiled back. She tried to think of another way that Terrans, or other aliens, showed friendship. Slowly she reached for the water flask clipped to her hip belt. There were rivers and streams on this planet, presumably these others would recognize water. Once she poured it out of the bottle. The others fumbled with their hand-held devices and muttered to each other.

  Taking the cup off the top, Kharmadi poured a little onto her fingers. “See, just water.” She poured some into a cup, and took a drink. “Mmmm, good.” Setting the flask and cup, still half filled with water, down on the ground, she backed slowly away. The circle surrounding her widened. “Any takers?”

  The one she’d first startled said something and held a hand out. Another put a device in the extended hand, and the purple horned creature approached the flask and cup. It dipped a section of the device into the cup, and the device whirred and beeped.

  After a moment examining the device’s readout, the creature set the device down, picked up the flask, and sniffed. It looked at Kharmadi then back at the flask. Then it poured a little water over one hand, wetting both thumbs and fingers. It looked again at Kharmadi, and poured water into its cupped hand to drink.

  Kharmadi couldn’t help grinning and chuckling. The beings surrounding her stirred, so she stopped and held her hands up in half-surrender. “Sorry.”

  Purple horns imitated her gesture, without grinning or saying a word.

  Realizing she was out of her depth, Kharmadi slowly reached for her messenger. The aliens around her shifted and murmured sounding unhappy. Purple horns backed away, leaving her cup and flask on the ground.

  She paged the head of the exploratory science division on the planet, Dr. Cleveland Ayers, sending him both video of the aliens around her, and the message, “I have a situation here.”

  “Infinite worlds!” Dr. Ayers voice sounded thinly electronic and very, very far away through the messager’s speakers. “Where are you?”

  As she gave him general directions, as best she could remember her path, the aliens around her began talking and shouting amongst themselves.

  “Maybe I should try to meet you half-way,” she whispered nervously.

  “Yes, that would probably be best. I’ll get a crew together, and we’ll find you as quickly as we can. Ayers out.”

  Kharmadi tried slowly backing up the hill, but her ankle hurt, making her footing treacherous. In any case the aliens showed no sign of letting her leave. They stopped shouting at each other and began shouting at her.

  “Uhm.” Kharmadi steadied herself, while standing on the slope of the hill. “The problem is, I,” she pointed to herself, “am one.” She held up one finger. “And you,” she pointed around herself, “are,” she looked around counting quickly, “twenty-two.” Kharmadi opened and closed her hands twice, then held up two fingers.

  Purple horns shouted something over the general hub-bub, and the noise lessened to a gentle murmur.

  “I’m going to go,” Kharmadi pointed to herself, then walked two fingers up the palm of her other hand. “You
come too.” She pointed to them then walked her fingers up her palm again.

  A long and occasionally shouted discussion amongst the aliens followed this. Kharmadi edged her way slowly up the hill. The aliens kept her surrounded, but seemed reluctant to get too close to her. So by the mere expedient of taking small steps in the direction she wanted to go, Kharmadi was able to creep back the way she’d come. They hadn’t quite crossed the meadow when a troop of Terrans burst from the fur brush.

  The aliens quickly formed ranks around Kharmadi. The largest grabbed her by the arm, held a device to her head and shouted something.

  The military squad that Dr. Ayers had brought instantly formed their own defensive ranks around the unarmed Terran scientists and administrators. Kharmadi recognized the tall, imposing figure of General Baxter when he stepped forward only from vids she had seen of him.

  "Kharmadi? Are you unharmed?" he asked.

  "Fine. I'm perfectly okay." Kharmadi grinned back. "They're actually very nice people, after you get over the initial shock."

  "General Baxter, if you will let us take it from here." The colony's Chief Administrator, Uljana Koleka a thin austere woman, pushed her way through to the front. "Please, request that your soldiers put their weapons away."

  "There are clear procedures to be followed when Terrans under my protection are threatened." The general glared down at Uljana. "You will have to wait until the situation is defused."

  In the silence that followed the two groups sized each other up. The tips of the high blue grasses rustled around them, tossed in the breeze like ocean waves.

  Kharmadi sighed to herself, before speaking up. "Could we worry about jurisdiction later? If they were going to hurt me they had many, many opportunities prior to this. When the odds were in their favor."

  Uljana glared at Kharmadi. "Kharmadi, if you'd followed proper procedure and reported them first before attempting contact, none of us would be in this situation."

  "And we can't be certain they won't hurt you," Baxter said. "We don't know anything about them."

  "Sure we do." Kharmadi shifted to take all the weight off of her injured ankle. "Or I do at least. They drink water, and their most vital organs are in their heads and bellies."

  "How do you know that, Kharmadi?" Dr. Ayers grayed head peered around the trooper in front of him.

  "This one is pointing a weapon to my head, which undoubtedly means that a hit to one of their heads would be serious if not fatal." Kharmadi looked up at the alien holding her. Its blue horned head was just turning from looking at the other Terrans to her. As if trying to interpret what they were saying. "When I fell down the hill at that one's feet," Kharmadi pointed to purple horns, "It grabbed its belly and screamed and backed away from me. Also, it drank some water from my flask."

  "Kharmadi, where is your water flask now?" Uljana asked.

  "I think I left it back there." Kharmadi winced.

  "Kharmadi! Equipment doesn't really appear out of the void," Uljana said through gritted teeth. "You people seem to think we have unlimited supplies here." She stopped, apparently recognizing that this wasn't the time for that old lecture.

  "Sorry."

  "This is all very much beside the point," Baxter said.

  "I agree." Uljana turned back to him. "If you will let us attempt to communicate with them we will be able to take care of this situation."

  Baxter shook his head. "I can't risk them taking any more hostages until we are certain they aren't hostile."

  The aliens had been holding their own arguments, all the while. Kharmadi wondered idly if they too were arguing over who had jurisdiction or precedence, or fighting over the subsequent honor or blame, as the case may be.

  The purple horned one stepped in front of her, with its back to the other humans. It pointed its center finger at the alien holding the weapon to Kharmadi's head. Then with the three center fingers together and the thumbs interlocked beneath, it pointed its fingers at her head before putting its hand down by its side. Then it waved a hand at the other Terrans, mimed the soldiers' stance, then put its hand down at its side.

  "Excuse me," Kharmadi called out to the Terran arguers.

  "Yes, Kharmadi," Baxter said.

  "We saw," Uljana sounded triumphant, "it would appear they will put down their weapons if we put down ours." She smiled smugly at Baxter, who gave the order.

  A wave of relief passed through both groups as the weapons came down. Kharmadi could see a lessening of the tension in the aliens, though her big blue-horned captor kept a tight grip on her arm. One of the smaller ones clapped once, and Kharmadi would have sworn the others around it were trying to shush it.

  "I wonder what that means," Dr. Ayers said.

  "We'll know soon enough." Uljana stepped briskly forward, smiled at the aliens, spread her empty hands out before her, and began what had to be a practiced - and to Kharmadi's mind rather useless - speech.

  As she spoke her greeting of peace and friendship, several of the aliens jabbered and muttered amongst themselves. When Uljana stopped, a medium sized alien with long straight purple horns hanging limply around its face stepped forward, clasped both hands together with a strange twining of thumbs around its pot belly, bowed slightly, and began its own speech. All presumably recorded by various sorts of equipment, both Terran and alien.

  Uljana motioned one of the techs forward. "Now if we can just get them to let our equipment examine theirs we can begin some real communication." She and the tech both tried various miming motions to explain what they wanted, but the aliens wouldn't let the tech or any Terran equipment near any of their alien equipment.

  The aliens kept putting the equipment behind their backs, or handing it off to another, father away from the Terrans.

  "We're getting no where," Baxter said impatiently.

  "Unfortunately, in order to build a vocabulary, we need to let our communications unit record information off their machines to interpret." Uljana ground her teeth in frustration. "If we could just get one word."

  "Water," Dr. Ayers said, as he stepped forward. He looked very old and stooped beside the vibrant Uljana. "The communications unit looks first for scientific and mathematical formulas, since chemicals and physics are universal. Water is a chemical. Did anyone think to bring a water flask?"

  No one had.

  "Wait. I have an idea." Kharmadi snapped a blade of grass off half way down. After tying a knot at both ends, she tied a third in the middle, shaping the whole into a V. Big blue horns, on her left, gripped her arm tighter, but didn't interfere. Kharmadi held up her finished work. "H2O." Looking at Purple horns, she said distinctly, "Water." She handed it the tied blade of grass, and mimed drinking. "Water."

  Purple horns looked from her to the strange grass sculpture in its hands and back, over and over as she repeated, "Water," and mimed drinking.

  Suddenly its eyes went wide, and it said something that sounded like, "Irsa." It began babbling to the others, pointing to each of the three knots.

  The whole lot of aliens began babbling, shouting, and murmuring. Purple horns held up Kharmadi's sculpture, and said, "Irsa. Water."

  "Yes." Uljana nodded, then stopped as Dr. Ayers pointed out that the aliens had no idea what nodding or "Yes" meant. "Water. Irsa." Uljana again mimed the Terran equipment talking to the alien equipment, but again the aliens didn't seem to understand.

  Dr. Ayers held his hand beside his mouth, with the fingers and thumb opening and closing as if working a puppet, while he said, "Kharmadi, do this when you talk to me. Doesn't matter what you say, but say something."

  Feeling foolish, Kharmadi made a puppet hand by her head. "Uh, well. I think I sprained my ankle when I fell. Which is why I couldn't report this before they discovered me."

  "Oh, Kharmadi, I’m sorry to hear that," Dr. Ayers said conversationally, keeping his hand-puppet going. "We'll get you back to a medic as soon as we can."

  "I d
on't want to miss out on this."

  Nodding, Dr. Ayers said, "Now, put your hand close by some piece of their equipment, and keep it talking." He moved his hand to rest beside the tech's communication unit, as Kharmadi reached out to put her hand-puppet near a device being held by the alien standing in front and off to the side of her.

  Big blue horns jerked on Kharmadi's arm to pull her away from the equipment, but Purple horns intervened, and Kharmadi was allowed to continue. After another tense discussion between the alien group, Purple horns looked at Dr. Ayers.

  It held up one hand, with fingers and thumbs curled into a fist, the back of the hand toward Dr. Ayers. When it was certain it had Dr. Ayers' attention, it began to lift and close its center finger.

  "That looks obscene," General Baxter said, folding his arms, and turning slightly away.

  "But only to us," Uljana answered. "I wish I knew what it means."

  "It's binary code. One, zero, one, zero." Dr. Ayers nodded his head vigorously, and held up his hand in a similar way, but used his pointer finger. "It's trying to tell us they use binary code."

  Within a few minutes, the aliens had agreed to let their equipment "talk" to the communications unit. Shortly after that the communications unit began slowly reporting the alien labels for various chemicals. Both groups began milling around, stomping down the tall grass, and generally keeping themselves amused.

  It was abundantly clear to Kharmadi which of the aliens and Terrans were scientists, as they were the ones clustered around the equipment, becoming more excited with each piddly revelation. Uljana stood back, boredly waiting until the unit had reached a critical level of understanding when she could finally begin communicating with the aliens.

  One of the soldiers approached Kharmadi with a first aid kit. Big blue horns growled something unmistakably threatening, but the soldier merely opened her box and pulled out the inflatable splint. Big blue horns sat on the trampled grass beside Kharmadi, and watched intently as the soldier began peeling off Kharmadi's boot and socks.

  "Well, Kharmadi, think it might be broken?" the soldier asked.

  "No." Kharmadi tried not to wince when her foot twisted as soldier slid the inflatable splint on. "It's only sprained."

  Big blue horns shouted to another alien when the soldier finished and stood up to retrieve her kit from nearby. Another alien came over, and started to hold a device near Kharmadi's ankle.

  "No." The soldier gently swatted the device away. "We don't know how it works. It might harm her accidentally."

  The alien and the soldier argued for a moment, before Kharmadi intervened. "Just let them. I'll deal with whatever happens later."

  Kharmadi felt nothing as the alien held the device over her ankle. It babbled something to Big blue horns, and tried to mime something to Kharmadi.

  "Yes, thank you." Kharmadi nodded, not knowing what else to do.

  The alien seemed at something of a loss itself, and after a moment's hesitation wandered off.

  Tiredness from a full night's work finally caught up with Kharmadi, and she yawned.

  Big blue horns released her suddenly, and moved quickly away.

  The soldier shrugged. "I guess now that they know you're injured you're free to go." She gave Kharmadi a hand up.

  With the soldier's help Kharmadi limped over to Dr. Ayers. Kharmadi smiled. "Looks to be a busy morning."

  Dr. Ayers smiled back and nodded. "You get yourself back to a real medic, and get some sleep. Nothing exciting is going to happen here for a while. Hopefully next time you see these people, we'll be able to talk to them."

  "I'm fine. It's just a sprain," Kharmadi protested. "I want to stay."

  "Kharmadi, get yourself to a medic. Now." Dr. Ayers reached for the buckle to her equipment belt. "Give me this; I'll decant any useful information from it. You've done enough today already." He gestured to the soldier beside Kharmadi. "Take her back to the settlement, and see that she gets to a medic."

  The soldier glanced at General Baxter, standing and listening nearby. Baxter nodded, and the soldier grabbed Kharmadi's arm in a grasp comparable to Big blue horn's. "Let's go."

  Kharmadi limped back to the settlement, torn between frustration and elation.

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