CHAPTER XVI
What Could Possibly Go Wrong?
From the rim of the amphitheater, two Stone-Coats with infra-red vision watched the humans embrace. They didn't have telepathy or a sense of hearing, but their eyes were greatly enlarged and their infrared vision was excellent. What the embrace signified, they didn't know, but they passed their observations on to the rest of the local Stone-Coat Enclave within Giants' Rest Mountain. A thousand Stone-Coat parallel-processing entities of the Enclave considered the observations and decided that to a high degree of probability the observed human behavior was related to a characteristic of warm-life creatures called sex, which was related to something called genetics, which was basic to the survival and evolution of most water/carbon-based warm-life.
Through the interface recently established with the jants, confirmation was sought. The interface was awkward and inefficient, but a slow data rate was reliably supported. They translated their questions into digitized human words which were displayed on a computer display to waiting jants that could recognize the human-designed symbols. These observations were combined by the jant hive minds into complete human words and finally into understandable jant thoughts.
The question was considered by the jants. Resulting jant thoughts were entered symbol by symbol via an old Lodge keyboard driven by jants, into digitized human words that the Stone-Coats could read. "Yes," the jants confirmed, "sex intended to accomplish gene exchange and species reproduction is the likely explanation for the observed human-to-human interaction. It also relates to the strange fact that unlike jants and Stone-Coats, humans act as individuals and pairs, and only much less effectively in larger groups. This can be used against them." It took several minutes but the Stone-Coat understanding of humans increased incrementally.
The jant/Stone-Coat relationship was based on sound logic, both parties agreed. They complemented each other well, as each lifeform had different strengths and weaknesses, they were not in direct competition with each other, and they shared a mutual problem: humans.
Most important to the Stone-Coats, the jants were even less tolerant of cold than the humans. Unlike the humans, they would not compete with Stone-Coats when the cold times came. In cold times the jants would be content to withdraw to remaining pockets of warm areas where they could preserve adequate numbers of their species. The death of most jants would be perfectly acceptable. At that time, however, they would come into intense competition with surviving humans. Then, or at some time before then, the humans would have to be dealt with, and they should be weakened before that.
Of similar importance to the jants, unlike the humans, the Stone-Coats would not compete with the jants in warm times. However in both warm times and cold, the Stone-Coats had great computer-like digital capability and the ability to tap into human computer systems. Stone-Coats could also function in cold environments that the jants could not tolerate.
The jants had great biological brain capacity and the ability to spy on humans that they bit when in warm environments. Jants had telepathic ability and an in depth understanding of the warm-creature humans that the Stone-Coats lacked.
Then the Stone-Coat was blasted to bits by the Tribe humans the Stone-Coat inclination was to immediately attack and eat the Tribe humans and their lodges, as they had done several times before in past centuries and millennia. However, the Stone-Coat Enclave deduced that jant input on major issues involving humans could be valuable. So before attacking, jant advice was sought.
It took several minutes for enough jants to be aroused to formulate a response. During the delay, subsequent actions by the Tribe humans indicated that the humans also wanted to avert immediate warfare. Soon thereafter the jants advised the Stone-Coats that war against the human Tribe now would be a mistake, since in response the non-Tribe humans would surely use their armies to destroy the Stone-Coats. Like the jants, the Stone-Coats were currently too few and weak to openly attack the human race. These were valuable insights indeed, and the jant advice was heeded by the Stone-Coats. War with the humans was very likely to happen, but not yet.
When the time came to either subjugate or completely dispose of the humans, jants and Stone-Coats each had a much better chance of being successful if they were both strong and they worked together. Essentially immortal, both jants and Stone-Coats were in no hurry to dispose of the humans. They would wait until the time was ripe to achieve certain victory. They would watch carefully for such a time to arise. Meanwhile the interface that the Tribe humans promised to maintain would nicely support a continuing jant/Stone-Coat alliance, along with the study of humans and their science and weaknesses. Jants and Stone-Coats would strengthen themselves and weaken the humans before openly striking.