I grinned. “A black featureless block. Dimensions one by four by nine.” I leered at Marvin.
He covered his face and shook his head vehemently.
“The strains of Also Sprach Zarathustra in the background…” I continued.
Marvin started to moan.
“As the Deltans leap about, one throws a bone into the air…” Marvin’s dropped his hands and his eyes rolled. I waited a few more seconds for effect, then relented. “So we’ll just go with the drone, then?”
Marvin pinched the bridge of his nose. “I can’t believe I’m related to you.”
I laughed and turned to the desk. “On a more realistic note, we have drones with speakers now, so we can talk to the Deltans. Honestly, I think I’ll just go straight to Archimedes rather than trying to contact an elder.”
“Oh, I agree with that. Any of the others would probably just run screeching from the area. Archimedes will be curious.”
I nodded. “So, no background music?”
***
The surveillance drone showed Archimedes doing his usual patrol of the area. He varied his search from day to day, and had taken to randomly digging holes, looking for more flint. A couple of the other juveniles had accompanied him on occasion, but without any payoff, that had soon petered out.
I positioned one of the drones in a tree along his usual route. The drone camouflaged itself so that it looked like part of the tree trunk. Even if Archimedes spotted it, he wouldn’t think of it as anything but wood.
The Deltan language was far more guttural than anything humans could produce. I had set up a translation routine, so I could converse in English, without worrying about the fine details.
“Archimedes.”
Archimedes jerked, then went into a defensive crouch, looking wildly about.
“Don’t be afraid. I want to help you and your people.”
Archimedes slowly straightened up but continued to search for the source of the voice. “Who are you? Where are you?”
“I’m farther away than you can see, Archimedes. And I’m the one who destroyed the gorilloid that was attacking you. I’m also the one who brought the flint.”
Archimedes’s eyes lit up. Flint was priceless. I now had his complete attention.
“What do you want?”
I thought of all the ways I could answer that and decided to keep it simple. “I want your people to leave this place and go back to one of the old villages.” ＲâℕȫᛒĚ𝘴
Archimedes’ eyes went wide. “So old Moses wasn’t lying? There used to be other villages?”
“Yes, Archimedes. And some of them are better places to live than this one.”
“Some have flint?”
“Yes, and a better water supply, more food, and better defenses.”
His eyes narrowed. “If that’s so, why did we leave there? Wouldn’t that have been the place to stay?”
I turned and grinned at Marvin.
“Kid’s no fool,” he said.
“It would have been, Archimedes, but your people weren’t thinking of that at the time. Then it was too late, and they’d been driven out.”
“So, why tell me? Why not speak to the elders?”
“Would they listen to me?”
Archimedes had been searching for the source of my voice as we talked. Triumph lit up his face when he spotted the odd section of trunk.
“You are a tree?”
“No, that’s just where I am right now. Would they listen?”
He snorted. “Most of them are so stupid. They ask no questions; they have no answers. They just eat and sleep and hunt.”
I spent a few more minutes discussing it with him. He finally agreed to go talk to the village elders, although he made me promise to show a sign of some kind if it became necessary. In response, I cancelled the probe’s camouflage and floated it over to him. “How’s this?”
Archimedes went rigid and his eyes became huge, but he managed to not bolt. “That works.”
***
I watched from a distance as Archimedes talked to his elders, who sat in a semicircle facing him. It didn’t seem to be going well. Despite all his recent accomplishments and rise in status, Archimedes was still just a juvenile. Even some of the other juveniles had started to laugh and make jokes.
Finally, I’d had enough. I activated the probe and flew it over to hover above his head. The laughter and commentary cut off like a switch had been thrown.
Archimedes was no dummy. The sight of the whole village staring at a spot over his head had only one possible explanation. In an impressive display of natural showmanship, Archimedes didn’t look up or directly acknowledge the probe. He simply crossed his arms and looked smug.
In the background, Marvin commented, “Some things just transcend culture.”
“Or species,” I responded.
The disintegrating gorilloid was still very fresh in everyone’s mind, and the probe looked similar enough to the pieces of the buster to convince the Deltans. There was no backtalk after that. Archimedes explained to them what I’d told him. When he was done, Moses leaped to his feet and started yelling at everyone. It was pretty incoherent, but consisted mainly of variations on “I told you so.” Apparently Moses’ stories had been dismissed for years, and this was payback.
Eventually, Moses’ rant ran down, and the elders turned back to Archimedes. One of them—I decided to call him Hoffa—asked Archimedes if the floating thing would protect them from the gorilloids.
Archimedes looked up at the probe, finally acknowledging its existence. “It calls itself the bawbe.”
He looked around the circle. “It can help, but there are few of them and they are destroyed with each gorilloid they kill. They will guide, and they will help, but we must fight our own battles.”
Arnold, who had been standing outside the circle and listening, chimed in. “We fight here, or we fight somewhere else. The bawbe is right—this place is too open to defend. And I like the idea of more axes and spears.” He waved his axe around by way of emphasis, narrowly missing a few bystanders.
The argument went on for hours. Inevitably, some people wanted to stick with the status quo just because it was familiar. They fought the plan tooth and nail, even at one point suggesting that they send a party of Deltans to scout out the other location. Arnold dismissed that idea with a comment that he didn’t want to come home to a camp full of corpses.
I looked over at Marvin. “Jeez, this crap is universal.”
“Yep,” he replied. “Politics is, apparently, politics, through the whole universe.”