Chapter Text
The Star Beagle Adventures
Episode 16: And You And I Part I - Cord of Life
Scene 7: The Face of Need
Between the picture of time behind the face of need…
16.7
The Face of Need
“Washington…”
Captain Ronald Howard, XIV and his honor guard were the first humans to meet a gorian face-to-face. The colonists had dubbed these people “lizard-riding gorilla-people.” The very large creatures these people rode looked very much like a cross between an iguana and a Clydesdale. But the people themselves, to Howard’s eye, looked far less like gorillas and more like a blend of a fully bipedal American Pit Bulldog with some sort of cartoon devil, complete with short, stubby horns and a long, whip-like tail.
They came in several colors. The specimen charging at full tilt toward Howard was bright red with black-in-red-in-black eyes. His head was up, his body oddly erect, and he was rapidly beating his chest. He wore only a pair of banana-yellow swim-trunks.
Only a moment before this odd creature hurled itself into the air at the captain of the U.S.S. Beagle, Private First Class Elven Washington interposed himself between Howard and the charging gorian. The gorian was only slightly larger than a pit bull - about 4’ tall and about 130 pounds.
Elven Washington was the largest of the U.S. Marine contingent assigned to the U.S.S. Beagle - 6’8” and 340 pounds of lean muscle.
The charging gorian bounced off the enormous African American and bounced twice on the sand before performing a reverse summersault and ending up on his feet, tail whipping.
The strange alien straightened and brushed sand off the short fur on his chest, then off his swim trunks. He shook his head a few times.
“They certainly made you folk big and tough! Welcome to Newellewell island! My little corner of nowhere. Thank you for honoring our traditional greeting ritual.”
Captain Howard stepped out from behind the massive marine, reached up to pat his massive shoulder. “Thank you, Private. You are unharmed?”
In response, Elven Washington patted his massive hands around his chest and stomach, from which their host had ricocheted, “Everything is in good order, sir,”
Howard chuckled, then quickly closed his mouth as he noticed the gorian shrinking back.
“My apologies, Professor. I understand that baring of the teeth has a very different meaning for your people than it does for ours. For us, most of the time when we bare our teeth we are smiling, which is an expression that signals amusement, merriment and pleasure. I understand for your people it would be interpreted as aggression and can be considered threatening.”
“From what John Jr. told me, we will have many, many cultural dissimilarities,” Professor Newellewell responded. “So much so that it might be unfortunate that we are physically so similar. Similarities neither of us, apparently, share with the aliens who are coming?”
“The holy landers,” Howard replied. He looked about on the beach. It took a few moments for him to find what he was looking for.
Newellewell watched with interest as Captain Skip Howard walked toward the surf, then followed as Howard signaled him. An animal about the size of his hand was skittering just ahead of the cascading waters, searching the sands just as the water washed back across it.
“I wouldn’t touch that,” Newellewell advised. “They aren’t interested in anything larger than your thumb, but they have a really nasty bite.”
“What do you call these?” Howard asked.
“Ulants,” the retired gorian professor replied.
“Okay, imagine one of these, but about this tall…” Skip Howard held his hand as high up as he could reach. “With three eyes, three antennae, three hands and sometimes it walks on two legs, sometimes on four and sometimes on six. Covered with natural body armor, kind of like the ulant, but also has a stinger.”
“So these holy landers don’t look much like an ulant at all,” Newellewell observed.
Howard made an amused noise without smiling. “Yeah, but they look a lot more like one of those than they look like either of us.”
“John Jr. told me that your people are here to protect us from these holy landers.”
Skip Howard nodded. “They sing. And they tune their singing to find out which series of vibrations can override the independent thought of intelligent species so that they can broadly control them. They have done it to our people. And to many other people in this general region of space. We’re here to prevent them from enslaving your people.”
“Why?” Newellewell’s red eyes gleamed with strong emotion.
Skip Howard gave a resigned sigh. “We needed a place to protect John Jr. and his siblings from them and this was the only system available to us. So we’re responsible for leading those holy landers to your doorstep.”
“You misunderstand my question, Captain Ronald Howard the fourteenth. What makes you think we wouldn’t prefer to be enslaved by these holy landers?”
16.7