Koban: The Mark of Koban (47 page)

Telling the children to take their seats by
their computers, he leaned back against his desk. He picked kids at random,
asking them each what they had learned from the frill contact. Instead of the
range of things he expected, the first five of them said the wolfbat needed to
get home, its family was in danger, or some variation of that theme.

He ignored the other hands waving in the air,
each trying to be the next to answer. He motioned them down. “I believe you all
have better sensed what our captive here wants than I did, although I felt some
of that. Ethan, or Carson, do you have an idea of what it wants and why it’s so
urgent? What was it doing when you stunned it? ...Yes, we know you must have
used your jazzers, and no, the cats didn’t tell us. It just makes sense.”

Carson, the brasher of the two boys spoke
first. “I was playing bait, lying on the ground with a dead skeeter on me, to
draw a squad down close enough to zap one of them. Ethan was under cover to
protect me, and I had my jazzer under my back, out of sight. There wasn’t any
risk Sir, honest.”

Laughing, Rigson assured him. “I wasn’t really
asking how you did it, though that was inventive, if more risky that I know
your mother’s would accept. No, what I wondered is what were the bats doing,
and you indirectly told me that. They were hunting and this one was assigned
the job of driving away the skeeter for the squad to steal its ‘kill,’ which
was you. I’ve seen that a number of times.”

He posed a question. “Do you think this little
guy has pups at home to feed?” he got multiple answers.

From the girls it was “Yes.” “It has two.” “He
has a mate and babies.” All of the girls voiced a similar expression.

From the boys it was mostly “I dunno.” “I
think so.” “Could be.” Or some equivalent uncertainty as to why it needed to
get home so urgently.

The difference in focus and the questions the
kids wanted answered by the wolfbat followed the pattern of what the girls
might have had more interest in, compared to the boys interests. Boys probably
wanted to know what flying was like, what it hunted, how they killed it, and
not why it needed to hunt, or if it had a family.

Rigson, after his run-in with, and injury by
wolfbats on his first day on Koban, had learned as much about them as he could.
He was sure the girls had homed in on the wolfbat’s problem. “Now that we heard
various answers as to why our little captive wants to go home, and we watched
him store the extra meat in his throat sack, how many of you think he was
hunting to feed his family? A show of hands, please.” He knew he was manipulating
their response, but it was a needed lesson.

Every hand went up. After the uncertain boys
heard the more probable answer from the girls, they all recognized it as the
correct reason. Now he needed to get them to do the right thing. Without their
teacher having to
tell
them what to do.

“Should we let it return home to feed his mate
and babies, or keep him here for us to stare at him in a bigger cage?” Boy was
that
an unfairly phrased question. He got the only answer he had made sound fair and
reasonable. However, they felt like it came from them, not their teacher.

It was unanimous. They all wanted to let it
fly home. He was particularly pleased with the shamefaced looks Carson and
Ethan shared. Their motives for catching the bat were good. Their understanding
of why it needed to be free was better.

He was simply going to escort the class
outside to effect the release, when Carson had a proposal first.

“Why don’t we explain to him why we are doing
this? Ethan and I can use the cats to tell him.”

Rigson nodded. “It can’t hurt, and he might
understand. Give it a shot.”

Both boys kneeled on each side of the cage,
signaling the cats to come close. The wolfbat didn’t look particularly nervous
this time, after so many repetitions. It tolerated the double touch without
stirring. The boys sent it whatever images they had decided on for almost a
minute, then simultaneously pulled their hands out of the cage, smiling.

In deference to Mr. Rigson, they all rode an
elevator down to ground level. Taking the north exit, Carson and Ethan carried
the cage about fifty feet from the dome. The wolfbat had grown gradually more
agitated as they left the dome. By the time they sat it down it was actually
quivering.

The boys untwisted the ties along three side
of the cage top, but waited to raise it on an agreed joint signal. The class
and Mr. Rigson stood about twenty feet back, the cats with them. The kids had
their focus on the cage, so didn’t notice their teacher had his jazzer in his
hand, but held it under his old Stewards vest. The two boys looked at him, and
he nodded.

They raised the lid and stepped back quickly.
Instead of leaping out and flapping away furiously as they expected, it hopped
onto the edge of the cage and looked up, then back at its former captors.

He spread his wings and shook them to remove
the stiffness of the day spent confined. Then he flapped quickly, but not in a
panic, and climbed in a spiral over the herd that it no longer thought of as
prey.

Then he angled off towards the forest, outside
the territory of these strange animals. He had food for his mate and pups. It
was high quality food, and because it was morning, his mate would not have left
to hunt yet, reluctant to leave her pups. He gave a scream of joy in a Flock
signal. He heard an answered from a distance.

****

The boys spent a long smelly afternoon and early
evening cleaning the stinking Earth animal corral, shoveling stuff that went
into either a compost pile, a Krall recycler machine for grinding and drying or
into a bin for the hydroponics section to claim tomorrow. Modji, the woman that
was looking after the corral tonight told them they were both supposed to go to
Carson’s home when they were finished. Their parents would be there.

Terrific! They were getting another lecture,
and in quadrasound this time, from two Moms and two Dads.

They showered in the corral’s locker room,
slipped on the change of clothes they had brought, stuffing the reeking work
clothes in bags.

When they walked in the door, they discovered
their parents, Uncle Tet, Aunt Maggi and Aunt Aldry clustered in the family
eating alcove sipping drinks and picking at snacks. Stepping from around the
corner of the eating alcove, a sandwich in hand was Mr. Rigson. He saw the boys
in the doorway, and said hello. This caused the others to look their way. There
was no sign of their brothers and sisters. This looked like some sort of high-level
adult only gathering. What new kind of trouble were they in now?

Uncle Tet held up his hand to their parents to
wait a moment and came over to them. Carson didn’t think the adults looked
angry, but Uncle Tet was going to talk first. That probably meant he was
Commander Mirikami tonight.

“Carson, Ethan, I’m not here to talk to you
about your capturing the wolfbat or how you two managed that. You’ve already
paid for that activity. I’m here, as we all are in fact, to talk about what
happened in class today, and the subsequent release of the wolfbat.”

When he said they were
all
here for this
talk, they looked up at their parents, and saw they were smiling. If they
weren’t in trouble, what
was
going on here?

“Mr. Rigson told your folks, Aunt Aldry and
Maggi, and me, all about the unusual communication your whole class had with
the wolfbat. That it was able to understand some of what it was told, and it told
you about itself. You did that using Kobalt, Kit, and their unique frills, of
course, but you did it by passing the thoughts through yourselves and the cats,
something we adults had not thought to try.

This opens up a new interspecies method of communication.
We believe the human go-between method might be useful with the Raspani, if we
can find a way to make it happen without frightening the poor things to death with
the cats.

“You also helped us in another way. After
spending some time frilling with Kobalt and Kit, while you worked off your
penance tonight, we believe the wolfbats are even more intelligent than we
thought. The cats repeated the images you used, and the bat’s reply, and it
seems you made the first steps towards generating cooperation with him. Similar
with the proposal we are trying to set up with the ripper prides.

“According to the images you and Ethan pushed
to the bat, you told him you would give him food if he wouldn’t attack humans.
That is pretty close to the agreement we offered the prides. We want you to follow
through, and see if you can get more wolfbats to participate. It would be great
to have two of our most serious threats become our allies on this planet. Will
you do that?”

“Yes Sir.” They both answered, thrilled to have
their first adult task to perform.

Commander
Mirikami
wanted to let them know how much he appreciated their taking on the serious
job. “That must be glitzy, even fabuli.”

Both boys looked at him strangely. He knew the
words but not quite how to use them.

Mirikami shrugged it off. “Since that wolfbat
might be working with us, do you have a name for him? I don’t want to keep
calling him ‘bat’ or some such generic word.”

Carson had one. “Ethan called him a bandit
once, and the name seems to suit him.”

Mirikami’s inquiring look at Ethan drew an
eager nod. “OK, Bandit it is. Now I think you two have some food waiting for
you.”

The boys headed for the table, and received the
inevitable cautionary warnings from their mothers, along with contradictory
congratulations from their proud fathers, as the boys essentially tuned them
out while stuffing their faces. Just as all eight-year-old boys (almost nine!)
will do when parents talk on and on.

 Aldry and Maggi joined Tet in the living
room. Aldry brought up the subject she and Rafe had discussed, after he also
experienced the wolfbat’s images provided by the cats. Kit and Kobalt were
babysitting the younger siblings tonight, at Thad and Marlyn’s quarters next
door.

“The bats have ultrasonic hearing, probably
better than what the Krall have artificially bred into their own genes. We
didn’t want to copy even a single genetic trait from the enemy, but here is an
independent example, which is more natural and Koban derived, and doesn’t
involve that weird extra set of ears they deploy.”

Maggi looked skeptical. “You aren’t considering
hairy pointed blue ears are you?” She laughed.

Returning an amused chuckle, Aldry shook her
head. “Nor movable ears for better directional hearing either. However, just as
we have parallel nervous systems now, we have room in our heads internally for
the small sized ultrasonic sensory receptors. These could at least pick up the
sound of Krall or wolfbat high frequency speech. Knowing they were even making
the sound would help alert a person to their presence. Once you can hear them,
it’s a matter of time before you learn to understand what they are saying. Jake
can already teach us both Krall high and low speech, and some wolfbat calls.”

Tet nodded his agreement. “Aldry, I’ve heard
Maggi repeat an old expression, ‘in for a penny, in for a pound,’ probably from
an old movie. Although I don’t understand the money connection with weight, in this
context it means we are already committed to so much from Koban life, why stop
when we find another useful gene?”

Annoyed, Maggi informed him, “I say again, if
you people won’t watch classic old movies, you will remain semi-illiterate. A
pound was also a term for a larger unit of
money
in old England.
However, I agree with the sentiment and with incorporating that modification.

“We have superconductor nerves already, we’ve isolated
whiteraptor genes for strengthening both bones and muscles, we have the ripper
genes for contact telepathy, and we talked about adding the ripper’s night
vision. So why shouldn’t we have ultrasonic hearing?

“None of these mods will alter our outward
appearance, and all of them are inheritable. When combined, they should make us
more than just competitive with the Krall. If we can’t meet and beat that enemy
then all of this is a wasted effort, because there won’t be any humans alive in
another thousand years.”

Tet was out of the loop on some of the gene
research lately. He had a question. “How can you call it ‘a normal outward
appearance’ if we have a neck frill?”

Both Ladies laughed so hard it drew the
attention of those in the smaller alcove. The parents left the boys eating,
both lads grateful to escape from the lengthy “kind” parental advice.

Aldry told them what they were discussing, and
repeated Tet’s question, not sure if they had spoken to Rafe recently either.
Dillon had of course, since when he wasn’t hunting for the dome’s meat, he
worked part time in Rafe’s research lab, and offered an explanation.

“Tet, we won’t need to employ the complete biological
mechanism the Koban feline equivalents evolved here. That started as a rare
mutation in a primitive common ancestor of the Koban feline lineage.

“We did think we might need to use the frill at
first, if we wanted that trait. Their contact telepathy nerve endings only
extend to their necks, and are densely concentrated in the fleshy frills, but
the nerves are simply superconductor sensory links, as we now have everywhere
in our bodies. The rippers sense our images, and pass some to us when their
frill contacts any part of our anatomy, but it is strongest with us when in
contact with our hands. In humans, the densest nerves are in our tactile sense
of touch in our fingertips… Well, I won’t discuss some of the other even denser
nerve clusters. Or else Maggi and Noreen will both smack me for being crude and
vulgar.” He glanced at both of them before he continued.