Dalmas, John – Yngling 02 – Homecoming

Even more than with most men, the productive work of his mind apparently took place at a subconscious level. And he does not seem to have reviewed its “printouts” consciously. Whatever monitoring of them he may have done seems, like the computing itself, to have been subliminal. His printouts were available, however, for what we might call conscious expression. That is, he could explain his reasons better and more simply than most of us explain ours, and I suspect that if he were writing this, it would be much simpler and considerably more enlightening.

I can at least hope that if he were reading this, he would not laugh, and might even approve.

From Human Consciousness in the Light of the Barbarian Telepath, Nils Järnhann, by Muhammad Chao. Pages 39-57, in ADVANCES IN PHILOSOPHY FOLLOWING THE FIRST TWO EARTH EXPEDITIONS. Kathleen Murti, ed. University Press, A.C. 867.

Nikko ducked into her tent and laid the armload of green-leaved willow twigs beside the firewood she’d brought earlier, then hung her canteen from one of the saplings that formed her tent frame. Her light field shoes were wet from the marshy ground where the willows grew. So this is the simple life, she thought. Not bad, as long as someone else provides the food and prepares it. A lot more agreeable than the life Anne and Chan described in the palace. The key difference, she decided, was the people.

As she took the radio from the field chest she wondered what Matthew would assign Chan and Anne to, now that they’d left the orcs, and whether contact with the orcs would be abandoned.

“Phaeacia, this is Nikko. Phaeacia, this is Nikko. Over. Over.”

“Nikko, this is Ram. Over.”

“Good morning, Ram. It really is morning here, you know. The sun is up, birds are singing—you should have heard their chorus about daybreak. ‘Din’ is a better word for it. I just finished my morning duties as a bearer of the wood and drawer of water. And my watch says oh-seven-oh-five local time, which makes it official. We had tough broiled meat again for breakfast, and my jaws are getting so strong I’ll soon be able to hang from a rope by my teeth.”

“Nikko, I’ve got something to tell you.” He said it in a flat even tone of voice, cutting her communication, and it froze the breath in her chest. Fragments of thought splashed through her mind—Matt hurt in a pinnace crash; Ilse, her safeguard, dead in childbirth; something irreparable gone wrong with the space drive. She waited, not asking.

“Matt and Mike and the Alpha were captured by the orcs yesterday. We don’t know how. I was afraid something was wrong when they didn’t come back on schedule with Chan and Anne and we couldn’t raise them on the radio. But we didn’t know anything for sure, and I didn’t want to alarm you when you checked in last evening.

“Not long after I talked to you I had a call from an orc headman named Ahmed. He said they had the Alpha, and Matt and Mike. He said they don’t regard us as enemies and won’t harm them as long as we do nothing to interfere. He didn’t say what we shouldn’t interfere in, but I guess we’ll know when the time comes.”

He paused. “I’ll send Beta down with Ilse later today and bring you back up.”

“No.”

“No? What do you mean?”

“I mean no.” She listened to her words as if someone else was speaking them. “I’d be no good up there to myself or anyone else, and everyone would be walking on tiptoe around me. Let me bring Nils to talk to you, if I can find him. He knows a lot about the orcs and might have something to offer—information or even advice. I’ll switch off and be back as soon as I can, but I’m not sure how long it will be. Okay?”

“All right, Nikko, go ahead. But listen: After this don’t use Band D anymore and watch for multiple receiver signals. We don’t want eavesdroppers. Phaeacia over and out.”

“Okay. Nikko out.”

From high above, Ram heard her set go dead, and sat feeling grimly miserable. That was a hell of a fine woman. He wondered if it was true that, in a pinch, women were likely to be tougher than men. And he wondered about Anne and Chandra. The man named Ahmed hadn’t mentioned them. They must be prisoners too. There was hardly anything else they could be, except dead.

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