The Iake Alternative

The monitor displayed the same scene as yesterday, the day before that, and the day before that. One hundred twenty Iake sat in the main bay listening to one of their number speak in a voice the speakers registered as calm, normally inflected. Now and then heads nodded agreement but not one of the Iake interrupted the speaker. Gelar McKie found himself wishing he spoke Iake. He did not nor did his boss, Niko Kuro. Both men spoke standard; both men expected the Iake to speak standard. In fact, two the Iake did speak standard so that information could be exchanged as the ship's captain needed but, thus far, neither that captain nor the lone crew member understood what was going on in the bay. Whatever it was, it made these men nervous.
“You need to find out what they’re up to,” Kuro said. “You’re crew; you’re with them more than I. Find out what they’re up to.”
“But…”
“You’re crew. You agreed to obey my orders when you signed on. This is my order.”
“But…”
“Just do it, okay?
”Déjà vu,” Gelar McKie thought to himself. “A whole lot of déjà vu.” Since the war ended three cycles ago, Gelar McKie had killed the end of his enlistment doing the odd jobs soldiers get assigned when in occupied territories. He pulled guard duty on ammunition dumps and prisoner movement; he marched in parades feting itinerant dignitaries; he drilled in now anachronistic maneuvers. He’d followed orders day in and day out, rarely believing the orders made much sense. The days had dragged, each seemingly longer than the last but eternity finally met its limit. He was discharged.
Time dilation argued against going home. The home he knew wouldn’t be there. He’d known that the day he enlisted. With no family and no prospects, he'd decided it was just as wise to move on. Gelar signed on as crew on the two-man freighter, Sisyphus, bound initially for the Bread Basket worlds and then on to the big city worlds in the Interior.
“We’re carrying nothing but labor to the Bread Basket,” his new boss told him. “120 Iake, men, women, a few children. An entire clan as best they can tell.”
Gelar wan’t surprised. After three cycles in-country, there was no way he could have avoided knowledge of the trade. A backwater population on a sparsely populated world, the Iake had ignored and been ignored by the combatants. Post bellum, their lack of technology made them interesting to agribusiness. Agribusiness was, is, and always will be labor intensive; Iake were cheaper than machinery. 
“You know much about them, the Iake?” Kuro had asked him.
“I know they are semi-nomadic herders, living on a sea coast, Their home is pretty much desert and all that stands for.”
“That’s it? That’s all you know?”
“Pretty much. What do you know”
“I know I’m getting paid to transport a bay full of them.”
That had been that until today, the third day of getting more and more uneasy watching the monitor.
“Make friends with one of those who speaks standard,” Niko suggested. “A little honest curiosity ought not to be taken too badly.”
“’Ought not’ is a nice way of saying let’s hope they aren’t too self-involved in their social behavior, isn’t it?”
Niko laughed his agreement.
“Okay, I’ll give it a stab.” Gelar rose from the table, took a last sip of stim, then looked once more at the monitors.
“Steady talking, that one. Steady stream of bullshit, that’s for sure.”
Then, Gelar walked the passage to the bay.

A k-second later, Gelar wandered the bay, circling the Iake throng still seated, still listening to the steady speech of the same woman, Now that he could observe her, Gelar noted that she was old, perhaps the oldest of the Iake on board. Old, maybe, but still spry. She’d been sitting cross-legged for 2 or 3 spans now, a feat Gelar was certain he could not match.
Sunshine, a Iake not more than 15 cycles, accompanied him, answering Gelar’s questions in a tone low enough not to interfere with the old woman’s speech. Gelar spoke in the same low tones.
“She’s been going for some time, now. What’s she talking about?”
“She reminds of us ancient history,” Sunshine answered.
“Ancient history? What for?”
“She thinks we need to be reminded.”
”Couldn’t you just read your history books?” This question produced a smirk on the young Iake’s face. Sunshine stood as tall as Gelar but weighed less, a fact Gelar attributed to Iake diet. Being that tall, Gelar could not avoid the boy’s condescension.
“We have no books, sir; we have no need for them.”
“How can you not need books?” Gelar asked, thinking to defeat the condescension with logic. “Everything we know about anything is in books. What do you study in school?”
“Everything you need to know is in books. We have our elders to remind us of everything we need to know.”
“No school?” The question tried hard to be a sneer but the wistfulness of a once terrible student came through.
“Our schooling happens at night around the fires”
“The elders tell stories,” Gelar concluded.
“Yes, our elders tell us stories of that which we must know.”
“What story is this elder,” Gelar gestured vaguely at the woman talking, “telling?”
“I am not old enough nor wise enough to tell you that story, sir. You should ask her.”
“If she spoke standard, I would.”
“All the elders speak standard, sir.”
That was more surprise than Gelar was prepared to deal with. He asked Sunshine no more questions but kept him strolling around the crowd for another k-second before Gelar left the bay.

I thought you said just the two boys speak standard.” Gelar’s accusatory tone set off a knee-jerk reaction in Niko. “Listen, crew,” the ship’s captain growled, “ you got a problem with what I tell you, you bring it up in a more civil tone of voice or text me or something but don’t come into my space into my face as if you have some claim that must be settled. I told you what the assholes at the port told me. If they were wrong, then, by the blackest hole in the universe, I guess I’m wrong, too. As you used to say in the infantry: BFD! That kind of error isn’t going to jeopardize this ship and that’s what I care about.
“Bythe way, crew, that’s what I sent you to find out, if this ship is in jeopardy. The old woman's still sitting there talking and its been four spans now. I got to tell you that what she’s doing is sending chills up and down my spine and I don’t have a clue why. Weren’t you supposed to find out why? Isn’t that what I sent you to find out?” Niko’s voice dropped to a lower range of sarcasm.
“And now you come back all high and mighty that more people speak standard than we knew about. I say again: BFD! That should just make it easier for you to find out what’s happening. You think you might do that? Get the hell out of my face and do what I told you to do.”

Gelar waited until Vic hour by which time the crowd dispersed moving back into the side compartments where meals were prepared and eaten. He ate dinner himself while he watched monitors. He thought the Iake agitated but he told himself he didn’t know enough about them to draw any conclusions. To his perception, the Iake seemed stiff, elaborately formal, bowing, careful not to bump into one another, apologizing elaborately when the confined space made the small bumps inescapable. As dinner wound down, Gelar decided to make his move.
In the bay, mostly deserted, he spotted the old woman walking the perimeter with slow, cadenced steps, her head raising and bowing, her voice muffled. Gelar fell into step beside her waiting for her to acknowledge his presence. For five or six c-seconds, the old woman continued to walk, mumbling as she went, head bobbing up and down. In time, she stopped, turned, faced Gelar saying not a word but looking at him expectantly.
“Good evening, ma’am,” Gelar began, suddenly ashamed that he did not know how to address this person.”
The elder smiled at his discomfort. “Evening, yes, were the sun where we could see it but it is not. For that, this evening cannot be good.”
Thinking to provide information, Gelar started: “Well, ma’am, we are traveling between….”
“Stars,” she interrupted, “as if my people do not know about stars. How do you suppose we came to be on Nueva if we did not know about stars, young man? Do you think us that stupid?”
Gelar found himself speechless. What had he thought? She’d mentioned the sun and not being able to see it and he concluded that she might not know about interstellar traffic and now he stood there much as he had stood before his parents after making one of his spectacular mistakes.
“I’m sorry, ma’am,” he managed to get out. “I just…”
“Never mind your apology, young man. It is for the wrong offense anyway. Let us move on.”
“You…you’re willing to talk to me?”
“What is it that we are doing here if not talking?”
“But you never talked to anyone before!” Gelar said.
“Nonsense. I have talked all my life. Many claim I have talked too much.” She smiled to herself and turned from Gelar. “Come,” she said, “walk with me before these old bones cement themselves into an unwanted position.”
“No, no, I mean you never talked to us before.”
“You never talked to me before.”
“But what about back on Nueva? What about all those missionaries and managers and people who arranged for your trip to the Bread Basket? Didn’t they talk to you?”
“Many, many of your people talked at me. Most yelled at me as if that would improve my comprehension. None talked to me.
“As for arranging my trip off Nueva, none asked my preference. None asked any of my people what our preference might be. They simply herded us into a tanker, moved the tribe to the port, kept us in an electrically fenced compound, then began loading us onto the transports.”
”Did you not object to such treatment? Did you not call the officials?”
“Some men objected for us. They died….badly. After that some women and children died…also badly. Examples, I suppose. We elders told the people to stop dying.
“Soon after that that we were moved to the port. And soon after that we learned we were being sent to many worlds to work the fields of other people. In all that time, no one thought to ask what we desired.”
Gelar considered her words as they walked. After a turn around the bay, he finally asked: “What do you want?” The old woman stopped to look at him. Gelar supposed she measured the sincerity of his question. Evidently, she satisfied herself with his intent.
“I…and my people… wish to live under our sun.”
Without being consciously aware of where the question came from, Gelar blurted: “Which sun is that?”
The old woman looked at him as if he was not responsible for his words. Shaking off the embarrassment engendered by her look, Gelar asked the rest of the question as he should have asked it the first time. “But, you said yourself that your people came to Nueva from another world, another sun. The question, then, is reasonable. Which sun is your sun?”
“The sun that succors all our people,” she said. “Today, that means the sun we just departed.”
“Can it not mean the sun you are heading for?”
“It could if all the people were going to the same sun. Our history shows that we can make such a journey but together, always together.”
“When the people first arrived, arrived as a people, in the new land, , what you call Nueva; we spent time learning this new sun, understanding its ways, adjusting to its laws. Days were different; seasons were different; life was different. Many died before we adapted completely to our new sun but those who lived learned its ways, grew to love them.
“We built again our relationships with this new sun as we had with the former sun and life became as it should be, neither easy nor difficult, always interesting.
“Now you break that relationship without so much as a thought to who we are and why we are.”
“I didn’t,” Gelar protested. “I had nothing to do with it.”
The woman stopped, looked hard into his face, shook her head, walked away from him.

“They don’t want to be here,” Gelar said. “Simple as that.”
“Duh! Of course they don’t want to be here. Would you?”
“You mean you knew?” Gelar’s disbelief was total.
“You mean you didn’t? What did you think all those soldiers guarding the ramps were for?”
“Well, when it was me, my Squad Leader said something about prisoners being sent off to confinement on some low value planet somewhere.”
“Yeah, right. Did these look like prisoners to you?”
“I didn’t think about it, okay? It happened day in and day out and it ws none of my business. My business was lasting out my enlistment and then getting the hell out of there.” Chagrin, was that word for how he felt?
“Well, they’re not prisoners, boy; they’re slaves.”
“I’m as old as you are.”
“Boy, you are nowhere near as old as I am. You still believe in the tooth fairy.
“Forget that. Think about what I told you to do that you still haven’t done. What was she talking to the rest of them about for FIVE DAMNED SPANS?”
“The boy, Sunshine, said she was reminding them of their history.”
“What reminding? How reminding? What the hell was she talking about? Don’t guess. Go find out.”

Now, it was Whiskey hour, the lights in the bay dimming to shadows. Enough light remained to show the old woman still walking the bay’s perimeter. Once again, Gelar fell into step, walked with her until she decided to talk to him.
“Do you still maintain you had nothing to do with this?” she finally asked.
“I’m just crew,” he said. “I’m just trying to find a life.”
“At the expense of my people’s life?”
“I’m just crew,” he said again as if that settled the matter. The look on the old woman’s face betrayed her non-acceptance of his claim. Gelar changed the subject. “What story were you telling today?”
“An old one, from the before time, when we were not yet on our world.”
“Really? What world were you on?”
“Who can say for certain? Some believe the ancient rumors; some don’t. But, where does not matter as much as what.”
“What happened What’s the story about?”
“It’s a story of the price of being yourself.”
“That sounds ominous,” Gelar said. “I’d hate to think I had to pay to be me.”
“If you know who you are, there is always a price.”
Gelar laughed. “No, there is no price. There is boredom and dreary existence, but there is no price.”
“Did you not say you became crew to get off our world, to find a new home. Was that not a price?”
“Certainly, sure, of course. It was the price of passage off world but that is not the same as paying a price for being me. No matter where I’m at, I’m still me.”
“Are you certain of that?”
“Of course I’m certain of that. Why wouldn’t I be?”
She stopped her walking, faced him, searching his face for more answer than she'd received. "Who are you?"
“I’m Gelar McKie.”
“Who is Gelar McKie”
“Me, of course. That’s circular; that is.”
“Tell me about Gelar McKie. What kind of person is he? What does he dream of? What does he value? Who is he connected to and how? Who is this Gelar McKie?”
They had somehow stopped walking to sit, she cross-legged, he sprawled on one hip, his torso supported by an elbow.
“I don’t know what I want,” he said. “I know that I don’t want to be in the infantry; I don’t want to go back to the planet I was born on. I want to see the Big Cities, I guess. I want to travel there and find what they have to offer.”
“Why?” the old woman asked.
“Why not?” he answered. “Why must there be anything more than I’m curious?”
“Consider for a moment that this ship’s captain does not honor his part of the bargain. Suppose that he refuses to take you to the Interior.”
“Then I get off his ship. That’s easy.”
“How do you get off a ship on which you are imprisoned?”
“But, I’m not imprisoned.”
“You are not imprisoned only if you believe you have a choice in the destination.”
“I do. I can always get off the ship.”
“Precisely.” The old woman grinned. Gelar did not understand the grin, shook off the tremor of fear he felt, went back to the topic he came to discuss.
“So, tell me the story, please.”
With an even broader grin, the old woman asked: “Your story?”
No,” Gelar laughed and then didn’t laugh, “the one you were telling your people.”
“Oh, that story. Pay attention, then, because your captain will want all the details.”
The grin became a smirk but the voice did not change at all.
“Once upon a time, in the old place of desert and sea, the place we call Xico, there came to a clan of our people a new people sailing a great ship that made dwarves of the clan’s simple canoes. The foreigners came with crosses and swords, muskets and dogs. They came with a message of redemption.
“We would, they say, be redeemed by traveling to a new place where there were farms to be worked, herds to be tended, churches to be built.  Just acknowledge god, board their ships, all would be well. We’d feel the saving grace of redemption and know ourselves destined for their heaven.
“The clan elders explained to these people that our people lived in this Xico place by agreement with our gods, that we could not desert our gods any more than they could desert their gods. We suggested, though, that we could live in peace together in Xico. We even offered to help build them a church since such buildings seemed important to them.
“They asked us, first, to build a great fence, a corral they called it. We did. When we finished, they herded all the clan they could find into this corral. When a child thought to wander away, they killed that child.
“The next day their priests came to our people to demand their conversion. Our people must be baptized, they said, or their god would not recognize us. They told us many stories of their god’s mercy and benevolence and love for us. All the while their soldiers stood around the corral with their muskets and their dogs.
“The priests told us that baptism simply meant pouring a trickle of water on the forehead while the convert said they believed. The clan elders said such a thing could be done. Let the priests pour their water; say aloud “I believe.” The clan could do that.
“So, we tried. The first of our people became baptized shouting their belief. Things went well until one priest chose to ask a young woman what she believed. “I believe in the sun,” she said. “You mean the son of god,” the priest corrected. “No, I mean the sun that shines on all of us.” The priest turned to a soldier who took her head.
“From that point on, each person to be baptized was asked what they believed. Those who chose to believe in the sun were murdered.
“The clan elders spread the word that believing in this new son of god could be turned into a belief in the sun above. From that point, all converts believed in the merciful son of god and they were spared their lives.
“The people lived in the corral under the watchful eyes of the soldiers and the lashing tongues of the priests. The great ship was prepared, a new version of the corral built on its deck using the labor of the people. The priests were not coy but explained daily the great honor being extended to the people. The people were going to assist in spreading the faith by freeing the priests and soldiers from common labor so that they could tend the souls of the faithful and devote their time to converting the pagan in this new world. The day would come, the priests explained, when all would board the great ship and sail to Kaliff to begin the great work.
“One young man of the people learned the nature of the joins of the ship’s corral. Learning this nature, he altered the connections at one pole of the fence. He told the clan elders what he had accomplished.
“At night, around the lone fire permitted the people, the elders began to talk of what it means to be the people. They talked of the land, the sea, the plants, the sun. This was who the people were. No more, no less. This was their choice as it had always been their choice.
“Do not try to escape this corral we presently occupy, they told their people. Escape this corral and they will hunt you down with their dogs and kill you. They will beat some of those who do not escape.
“Content yourselves. We will escape from the great ship.
“A young man pointed out that escaping from the great ship at sea was certain death. The people did not swim. The elders agreed. But, in this manner, the people would choose the time and the place they would die, not these foreigners.
“For the people, leaving this land is certain death. These foreigners do not care for our survival. They will work us in the future as they work us now. Their ceremonies will celebrate how they buried us in a land where we did not belong. Death at the foreigners’ hands or death at our hands, that was the choice of the people.
“The day came when the people were herded into the corral on the great ship. The missionaries, the soldiers, the dogs all came aboard. The anchor weighed, the ship turned out into the bay. Six spans into the journey, covered by the crush of people in the corral, the young man loosed the joints. The elders led a final prayer to the sun now setting before the ship.
“While the foreigners concerned themselves with an evening meal, the people surged through the break in the corral, up over the sides, into the sea. Many cried their fear as they left the ship, many screamed their terror from the water, but some laughed and some prayed. All the clan died.”
The old woman waited a moment, catching her breath or regaining her composure, Gelar was not certain. She finished: “That is the tale I told my people.” Then, she rose with dignity, bade Gelar good night, and walked off into the shadow.

“Good thing this is not a sailing ship, eh?” Niko said. “Maybe when they get to the Bread Basket. Maybe, there, they’ll get an opportunity but it won’t be my problem. I’ll get them off this tub and move on with the next cargo.”
“To the Interior, right?” Gelar almost crossed his fingers as he waited for the answer.
“What? The Interior?” Realization dawned on Niko Kuro. “Oh, yeah, sure, the Interior. That’s where the next load will go. Absolutely.”

There were no more five-span meetings of the Iake. Gelar spent a great deal of time with them, particularly Sunshine, who seemed eager to learn about being crew on a transport. Gelar showed him the ropes, such as they were, rigging, cleaning, oiling, the nuts and bolts of things. Gelar prided himself on not demonstrating anything that could be used against himself or Niko. He didn’t explain the locks on the interior bay doors so there was no chance an Iake saboteur could slip into the crew quarters or get to the pilot’s deck. But he showed him everything he thought safe for the boy to learn.
Even the day Niko decided to test the emergency systems, Gelar found Sunshine tagging behind him. The drill required Gelar to suit up, get into the bay, cross under zero-g to the great bay doors and simulate operating the door mechanism. Through the interpreters, Niko warned the Iake of zero-g, explained the drill being run, advised them to remain in their side bays while the drill ran.
Time critical in a real emergency, Gelar executed this drill as fast as he could manage so that, should the unthinkable happen, he’d do it by routine. The infantry had taught him to learn drills well enough so that you don’t think about doing it. When the time comes, you do it right the first time. He entered the bay, jetted to the door controls, , hooked his suit to the bay wall, flipped up the safety cover, simulated pushing the release.
“Door opening,” he reported into his suit com. “Hang on,” Niko responded. A d-second later, Niko announced satisfactory conclusion to the drill. Gelar replaced the cover, felt normal g return, and turned to bump into Sunshine.
“What’s that?” Sunshine asked.
“Oh, that’s the bay door release. Opens the bay to space.”
“Oh,” Sunshine said and turned away to look at something else. Sunshine kept a steady barrage of questions about this and that going for the next several c-seconds. Finally, Gelar informed him he wanted to get out of his zero g suit. He’d be back later and he’d answer all Sunshine’s questions.
Gelar didn’t think anything of what had happened until late that night as he tried to get to sleep. The nagging suspicion that he’d made a bad mistake refused to go away though he tossed and turned, counted to a thousand and back again. It finally dawned on him that he had shown Sunshine how to open the bay door but his memory of the boy’s apparent lack of interest served to calm him down, let him get to sleep. He saw no reason to inform Niko of what had happened.

Ship routine took over. Two days out of Wheatfields, first of the Bread basket planets, he found the old woman walking the bay and joined her. After a time she acknowledged his presence. “Should a person’s death mean something?” she asked.
“You mean other then the end of that person’s life?” he asked in turn.
“Should it mean something on the cosmic scale, or the social scale, or the political scale?"  she pressed.
“I suppose it can mean those things depending on whether it is staged or how it comes about. Certainly, history records the deaths of significant persons.”
“How does one become one of history’s significant persons?”
“Know the guy that’s writing it, I suppose.”
She laughed, surprising  him that she could appreciate his humor.
“Or,” she countered, “know yourself.”
“As good as I know myself, I don’t believe that’s any guarantee some historian is going to write about me.”
“I’d be surprised if some historian doesn’t write about you,” she said. With that she walked away.

They pulled into Wheatfields orbit. Niko made the arrangements for a landing the following day. Negotiations completed, he announced the great event to the Iake over the intercom. Niko and Gelar watched the reaction with growing unease.
Iake began to leak out of the side bays, some towing children, some holding hands, some with arms encircling shoulders and waists. The entire clan congregated around the old woman, now praying aloud, her head going to the ceiling, then to the floor, the same ritual she’d practiced the entire voyage.
“What are they doing?” Niko asked.
“I don’t know but I don’t like it,” Gelar said.
“I don’t either.”
On the monitors, all the people chanted along with the old woman. Some cried, some smiled. They looked up with hope, down with grief. Their feet moved in time with the chant causing the mass to orbit the old woman.
“Where’s Sunshine?” Gelar asked.
Studying the monitors, Niko finally admitted: “I don’t see him.”
Heading for the locker holding his zero-g suit, Gelar called over his shoulder: “Check the bay release switch.”
Niko yelled “what the hell…” but he a scanned a camera towards the door. There he saw the Iake youth, boasting an ecstatic grin as if he was party to the greatest joke ever told. Sunshine’s hand rested on the release mechanism. “Oh my god!,” Niko gasped. He thought to stop Gelar but that one was already suited up, halfway into the airlock when the alarms screamed.
The pressurized bay was no longer so. Out-gassing hurled all the people against bay doors methodically opening to space. With the doors opening wide enough, one hundred twenty Iake sailed into individual orbits above Wheatfields.