Chapter 3
Arr was dreaming again. The same nightmare he always had, trees on fire, Henu screams, The Others disintegrating his people as they fled. However, this time when The Other looked his direction he looked very different, and then a ferocious beast appeared over him holding him down. He was desperately struggling to keep the beast from biting his face off. Arr woke up in a cold sweat with his head and heart pounding. At first he didn't know where he was. He ran trembling fingers through sweat dampened hair trying to get his bearings. His home with Nor had not been here. When he heard the breeze whispering through the trees it all came back to him and his heart slowed to a normal beat. He heard a movement by the fire pit and angled his head to look. There was a man squatting by the fire, stirring something in a pot. It was the man in his dream. He was the largest man Arr had ever seen, both tall and very broad across his shoulders. He was dressed in a black, tight fitting suit that looked like a second skin and he wore boots and a cap of the same color. His hair was brown with grey at the temples and his dark beard was flecked with grey and red. He wore a weapon on his right thigh and had one glove tucked in his belt.
Whatever he was cooking smelled familiar and yet different in some way. With the smell came the realization to Arr that he was very hungry. He had started gathering early, without a morning meal, wanting to repair the leak his roof developed during the previous evening's light spring rain. By the slant of the sun through the tree house window he could tell it was late afternoon.
The man rose stiffly from his squat and rubbed his left leg as though it pained him. It was at this very moment that Arr's stomach growled. It growled so loudly that the man looked up and grinned. "Was that your stomach? I thought Kay-o had learned to climb trees."
The man spoke an odd tongue, but it, like the smell, was also somehow familiar. Nor told him some members of the trader family were very adept at learning new tongues quickly. He said their father spoke several. Perhaps Arr was remembering back to his father's stories and one that was about this race of beings.
The man was talking again as he spooned out some of the delicious smelling concoction in his pot.
"I'm really sorry Kay-o took a piece out of you. I'd say he was sorry too, but he's a dar-dolf. They're never sorry!"
He came over with a slight limp to his step and assisted Arr up into a sitting position against the wall. He handed him the bowl and went back to the fire to fill the cup for himself. All the while he rattled on in a tongue only now beginning to form words in Arr's head.
Jake ladled out some stew for himself, grabbed a cushion from beside the fire and turned to go back to sit with the boy. Even after what the kid went through he didn't seem afraid. Instead he sat there propped up against the wall looking at Jake with those curious blue cat eyes. Jake wondered if those kinds of eyes gave you a different outlook on the world.
Jake flopped down on the pillow on the floor, only wincing slightly when his leg connected with the hard wood.
"The name's Jake, Jake Harcourt." He shifted himself into a more comfortable position. "I really am sorry about Kay-o giving you such a fit, but he's trained as a Protect dar-dolf. He saw that knife you were carrying as a weapon."
He thought the boy was listening to him, but just not talking. It was hard to tell. The kid was so intent on shoveling in Jake's stew.
"What's your name?" Jake pointed a finger at the boy's chest.
There was no response.
"Me.... Jake...." Jake pointed a finger at himself. "You?" He asked again pointing at the lad. The kid just buried his face deeper in his bowl. "Well, listen to me. I sound like dialogue out of a B-Rated vid." Jake said, with a bemused smile.
Still no response. It was a bit unnerving. Jake talked even more when he was nervous than when he was calm, so that meant he was talking non-stop.
When he handed the boy his bowl he noticed what looked like a tattoo on the palm of his right hand. He started to comment on it, just to have something to talk about, but thought better. So far the only reaction to Jake that the boy had was to devour his stew.
Jake was telling him about the battle over the galnon crystals. He got to the reason for coming to this particular planet, when he quoted from memory his father's log entry about the trader Raa. The boy's head popped up from his stew.
"Raa? My father was Raa!!" He said very clearly.
Jake was more than surprised. He thought from the reactions he was getting that the kid might be deaf and certainly didn't speak English.
"So, you do speak English." And he was the son of the trader Jake's father had met. Jake always seemed to be bumping into people his father knew.
"Speak more English." Arr said in excitement.
Arr was listening to Jake's every word as he satisfied his hunger. He found, to his delight, that his mind processed the man named Jake's language as he spoke. He literally learned by ear. Once the word was spoken it was cataloged and there for instant retrieval. Learning like this was an exciting experience and he wondered why Nor did not tell him how wonderful it was.
Jake kept talking and Arr kept asking questions, sometimes stumbling over a sentence, as if he was missing a word and searching for the right one. Jake was beginning to catch on. As he asked questions himself, he realized that the kid only spoke words that he himself previously uttered. The boy had a mind like a computer processing the data as it came in, rearranging it to suit the situation and spitting it out again. It was like he was some kind of savant.
The next few days passed quickly for both Jake and Arr. Arr was desperate to hear and learn this new language of Jake's. As for the mercenary, he'd never had such a rapt audience. He talked endlessly about his adventures through space. He honestly had to admit that it was a relief when the kid fell asleep then he could rest his voice for awhile. During one of these rest periods, in the second day, Jake took Kay-o back up to the cruiser. Being left alone, the dar-dolf would probably trash the ship, but when Arr got well enough to get out of the tree house, Jake didn't want another episode like the last. He wanted an opportunity to conduct a controlled introduction between the two.
Arr steadily got better each day. He seemed to be free of any infection, which was a lucky stroke Jake thought. The kid's vocabulary also improved with every passing hour. Soon the two could carry on a full blown conversation without much need for sign language.
Arr was starved for companionship. He told Jake everything he could remember about the battle, the Henu and Nor. He told Jake some of Raa's stories, as Nor told him, and was delighted to find that Jake knew a couple of the characters from the tales.
Arr liked Jake the minute he set eyes on him. He was like Nor who told him all those fabulous stories when he was growing up. From what he could remember, and piece together from Nor's tales, Jake was very much like their father too. Nor told him that Raa was taller than all other Henu, he was very outgoing, and entertained all at the Henu gatherings by recounting his many travels as a trader among the aliens of the galaxy.
Jake felt protective and responsible for his new friend. He couldn't imagine himself facing a life alone on a planet no matter how beautiful and idyllic this one seemed to be. He admired Arr's quick mastery of English and wished he could do as well with Henu. At first, Arr was under the impression that if he could learn English just by listening Jake should be able to learn Henu the same way. He was disappointed when he found that acquiring a language so easily, seemed to be a Henu trait only, not indigenous to humans.
By the end of the week Jake felt it was time to get his ground legs back. He had begun to sway when he walked from being up a tree too long.
*****
"He's not down there. I put him back up on the ship." Jake reassured Arr once more.
Arr still looked slightly distrustful as he surveyed the ground below for signs of Kay-o.
"I promise its safe." Jake shinned down the tree and whistled shrilly for the dar-dolf. "See.... No Kay-o." Jake held his hands up, palms open as though he were a
magician proving there was nothing up his sleeves.
With the absence of the dar-dolf proven Arr descended slowly of his own accord. When the kid got to the ground he made straight for the water. He pulled off his clothes at the edge and dove in swimming like a fish across the lake and back again. When he got back to where he had started he pulled up a reed with a bulb on the end, peeled the bulb and crushed it between his hands. The bulb had a milky substance in it that when it contacted the water and was rubbed between the hands created a kind of soapy froth. That's how Arr used it. He sudsed up his whole body standing at the water's edge, and then he dove back in for a rinse. When he came out to offer Jake a piece of the root Jake couldn't help but admire this unique life form.
He was a creature that spoke decent English after only one week of listening to a human. In the same time he had healed sufficiently enough from a dar-dolf bite to swim a lake probably a quarter of a mile across. He stood there offering Jake the bulb/soap. He really was a beautiful specimen. His whole body was covered with a fine hair that shone red/gold in the sun. There was not an ounce of fat on him. He was all muscle and those bright, blue cat eyes held both mystery and mischievousness in their depths. On top of all this he was just nice to be around. Jake had almost killed him yet even when Arr knew enough English to berate Jake, he didn't. He only asked what Kay-o was and why he had attacked him. The loss of this civilization was such a waste.
Jake took the makeshift soap, shucked off his clothes, and had a refreshing bath at the water's edge. Jake wasn't much of a swimmer, in fact he'd almost drowned once when he was a kid. To this day, he didn't like his water in any larger quantity then a bathtub full.
When they were both dried by the sun they put their clothes back on. Arr headed off to gather some goods for a meal and Jake tagged along. Every object they passed had to be named out loud by Jake for Arr's continuing language lesson.
They picked berries and dug roots for about a half hour. When Arr began to look tired Jake encouraged him to sit down in the shade of a tree.
The boy took what looked like an apple from his gathering sack, cut it in half and handed Jake part. As Jake took the fruit he once again noticed the tattoo in Arr's right palm and this time he felt comfortable enough with the boy to ask about it. With very little difficulty, for lack of the correct words, Jake got the full story.
"My people are all matched at birth with a mate. The male and female are both tattooed with their lineage. Mine reads, 'Arr son of Raa, Mate to Mya.' There is a ...." Arr faltered, looking for a word that was missing. "A gathering, but more." He cocked his head looking at Jake with those inquiring cat eyes.
"A party?" Jake supplied. Being around Arr now, as his vocabulary was expanding, was like playing a continual game of charades. "Or a festival?"
"What is the difference?" Arr asked.
"A party is a number of people gathered together to celebrate something. A festival is usually an annual gathering or celebration." Jake explained, hoping he had gotten it right. He was learning that defining words correctly was somewhat difficult at times.
"There is a festival at the time of flowers," Arr went on, now in possession of the needed word, "that when you reach your eighteenth flowering, you are allowed to join in the...." The kid paused again searching for the right word. When he couldn't come up with it he rose to his feet, grabbed an imaginary partner and danced sensually to a tune only he could hear in his head.
"A dance in the spring," Jake supplied. He was pleased with himself that he was getting so good at this game.
"A festival in the spring," Arr went on, as he returned to his seat under the tree, "that when you reach your eighteenth flowering, you are allowed to join in the dance."
Jake knew now that a flowering was a yearly count.
"All the dance people wear masks. As they dance they look for the other's tattoo until they find a match. When the matching left hand of the female is found they remove their masks as a sign of acceptance of this mate. Then they go to the trees to build their home and start a family." Arr's eyes glowed with the remembered tales of his brother about the celebration and the joyous unions that came out of it. Then he looked down at the tattoo in his open palm. "There was a Mya, daughter of Kel, Mate to Arr." When he looked up there were tears in his eyes. "She was younger than me by a year. I know which one she was.
"All children between two and four flowerings were kept by the lake. They were watched by females that had lost their mates. Mya was one of these children. I had turned four, so I was free to play with my brother. When The Others came, she was with the rest of the children by the lake. Three days later when The Others left they were dead like everyone else except Nor and me." Arr tossed the core to his apple into the bushes by the tree and rose to his feet. "This would have been my spring to dance with Mya," he said poignantly. Without further conversation he turned and headed back to the house in the tree with Jake following in his footsteps.
Chapter 4
One day flowed easily into the next. Jake's leg was getting a good rest. Arr had prepared a poultice that soothed the ache in it considerably. The boy's shoulder was as good as well, ah... the recuperative powers of the young, Jake thought. The only thing left to show where Kay-o bit him was a thin line on his shoulder where the fine red/gold hair didn't grow anymore.
It had been three weeks, now. Jake knew he must make a trip up to the cruiser to check on Kay-o. Not only would the dar-dolf be lonely and need a good run, but Jake estimated his automatic feeder was probably low. If it ran out there would be no ship to come back to. A hungry dar-dolf was worse than all the destructive power of a Phase III Plasma Laser set on high.
Arr left the tree early as usual. Jake found him washing his hands at the water's edge. He was the cleanest critter he'd ever met.
"I'm going up to my ship," Jake said, briskly.
The boy's reaction took Jake by surprise. The kid rose from his squat, turned and walked away, without a word. Jake watched him go with eyebrows raised. He pulled his cap off, smoothed his rumpled, dark hair and put the hat back on. This mannerism was a habit he had when he was baffled by something, as though smoothing his hair would make it easier to think.
"Oh well, back in an hour or two," he mumbled to himself.
Chapter 5
Arr had been preparing himself for this. He knew Jake would move on. He'd heard Jake's stories. He knew what kind of life he led. Arr wished he'd had the courage to ask him if he could go with him. It would be so lonely here again. He thought back to the time after Nor died and before Jake came. He took to talking to himself, the trees, even the lake. He felt he would go crazy if left alone, but he could not ask Jake to take him. He had already decided that. Jake was a fighter. Arr didn't know anything of fighting. Jake could pilot a cruiser. Arr knew nothing of technology. Jake had traveled throughout the galaxies. Arr knew only this small piece of dirt. Arr could not burden Jake with such a useless, stupid being. Arr would go if asked, but he had not been asked.
Even though he only knew Jake a short time he had a desire to cry as he did by Nor's grave. Cry not only for the loss of friendship, but for what felt like family loss again. The young Henu had bonded with Jake. Now Jake was leaving.
Arr heard the blast of the planet pod's thrusters, turned and saw the small ship lift off. He collapsed at the edge of the grove of trees, watching it vanish into the sky. Arr sat staring with water rimmed eyes at where the planet pod had been. Jake was gone.
Chapter 6
The condition of the cruiser was worse than Jake could ever have imagined. The only thing left untouched was the metal hull of the ship. It took all the restraint he had to keep from drawing his blaster and dusting the beast. The big bozo was bouncing around like a puppy, he was so happy to see Jake. If Jake hadn't planted his feet squarely the oaf would have pushed him over.
Jake spent the next four hours cleaning house. Kay-o followed him around like a shadow. Luckily most of the damage was repairable. All the seat cushions wou
ld need to be replaced. It would be a hard ride to the nearest Refitting Station. The dar-dolf had obviously thought they were edible when his food ran low. The only serious damage was to the communications system which appeared to be trashed beyond any repair Jake could muster. Kay-o must have picked the portion of the viewport containing the communications panel to sit and watch for his master's return.
Jake loaded the last of the garbage he'd cleaned up into the disintegrator. When Kay-o crawled in after it he was sorely tempted, but he pulled the big lug out before he latched the door and hit the switch. He tossed a few odd things in the planet pod and called to Kay-o to get in. They headed back down to the surface. It would be good to have a bath in the lake, Jake thought. He'd even settle for a cup of that herb stuff Arr fed him in place of coffee.
Jake brought the pod down within a few feet of where it had set before he left. He hopped out to go find Arr. He wanted to properly introduce his new friend to his wayward companion. He only got a few yards from the ship when Arr came running from the grove. The kid tackled him like he was a fumbled ball on the first yard line. When he pried himself loose he was surprised to see tears in Arr's eyes.
"What?" he asked.
Arr just shook his head and looked at the ground.
"You thought I left you? Think again cat eyes. You and me, we're pals. What would I do without you to talk to? You're the best audience I've ever had."
Jake gave the kid an affectionate shove on the shoulder, turned and walked back toward the planet pod. Arr heard him say as he went, "Come on, if you're leaving with us when we go you and Kay-o gotta make friends."