Chapter 5: Space Rock

My last mission failed. I wasn't a happy camper, and wasn't viewing my world objectively. I was supposed to bring 123 humans with me--the People of the Jaguar. I failed to communicate clearly--and 122 poisoned themselves with a home-made brew that I translated as Sacred Swill. Only Dawn survived--and she brought Spots, a jaguar--a pregnant jaguar. The language barrier was a problem.

"You are certainly chipper!" Tess observed.

"Sarcasm, ma'am?" I responded. Tess laughed. "I don't read you. Am I on the wrong script?"

"You worried me," Tess explained. "You were too cheerful. I know something about men who hold everything inside. They eventually fall apart. Now I understand."

I didn't.

"FRAGO," Mary Popov announced. "There's something we want you to investigate. A shuttle is being prepped for you."

"Take Dawn and her kitty," Tess said. "What is it with you and animals? I thought that the dogs were going to tear that cat apart, but you said something and the dogs and that jaguar are now friends."

"Dawn helped," I offered. "The dogs like her, too."

"So do the horses," Mary commented.

"I trust you, Tom," Tess said, "but I don't trust either the girl or her jaguar."

"Dawn insists that she is the jaguar's girl," I quipped. "So, what am I supposed to investigate and where is it?"

Ninety-something hours later I was closing in on a large asteroid. The rock was almost a perfect pyramid. Five flat surfaces--a square base and three triangular sides--were unnatural. Found by a detailed scan of objects orbiting the sun, a scan looking for signs of the Sa'arm, I was handed a shuttle and told to investigate. On the way out Dawn was learning English and playing with Spots. I was the sole watch-stander, with Baby Huey doing most of the work. Baby Huey was the artificial intelligence running Messenger of the Gods, the shuttlecraft I was using. Dawn spend her sleep cycles in the sleep learner/medical tube and Spots was near me when her human girl was locked away. Sometimes the jaguar climbed into my lap and sometimes she crawled in bed with me. Jaguars are big cats--Spots weighed 55 kilograms. Males can weigh more than 130 kilograms.

"The textbook says you're supposed to be a solitary animal except for mating," I told the jaguar. Spot just rolled on her back and pawed the air--telling me to rub her swollen belly. Gently, of course. Spot's docility was due in large part to the nanites and implants controlling the jaguar's behavior and part of Spot's marshmallow act was due to Dawn. As I began to rub Spot's belly, I talked to the cat, telling her that I loved her.

"Morn good, Thomas," Dawn's English was a work in progress. "Baby Huey woked I. Neighborly rocktoid investigate. Morn good, Spot."

Spot yeowled something, wriggled against the deck plates, exposed her throat. I increased my strokes from chin to tail.

"Asteroids are irregular when small," I said in a mixture of her people's language and English--there were no words for asteroid or spherical or kilometer, "and roughly spherical when large. This one is bigger than your village, a full kilometer at the base. And it is artificially flat. There is a difference between a tree and a house."

"I can see that. How far away are we now?"

"Oh, close," I said, "about 100,000 kilometers."

"I don't understand," Dawn grabbed her head. "That's too far."

"It's a quarter of the distance from us to that rock," I said "as the distance between Earth and the moon."

"I know it means something to you, Tom," Dawn said as she began rubbing my neck--quite a stretch for the girl. "You know so much!"

"I've been learning for more than 50 years." I pointed out.

"My people seldom live past 30," Dawn said. "Nobody wants to live past 40."

"And how old are you?" I asked. "I haven't been told yet."

"A girl has to have some secrets," Dawn smiled, speaking in a mix of English and her native tongue. "Baby Huey explained Confederation law to me, and that Confederacy Uniform Code of Military Justice. You own me, Tom. Anytime you want to make babies, I am yours. Don't worry about the law--"

"I must," I said, "and even more, I must worry about what is good for you and good for the babies. There's more than just carrying the child to term. You saw for yourself how much children must learn. There's more, of course--by age 14 in your old life you would have been a mother. You would have been mated around age 12. I'm guessing you haven't reached age 12 yet or you'd be mated."

"My mate was to be a jaguar," Dawn interrupted, "but you came along. When are we getting more jaguars?"

"As soon as I convince someone that jaguars make great war dogs," I said. "The bite of a jaguar is enough to rip the head off a Sa'arm unit. Third largest cat in the world, most powerful cat jaws--they eat turtles. Independent cusses, too--once they understand what they're supposed to do, they will make fine additions to the Confederate Marines or Army. All we need to do is establish bonds between a human and a jaguar to make it work."

Spot rolled to her feet and crawled into my lap, nuzzling my face.

"Girls, it may be my imagination, but I think that asteriod is living," I announced. I wasn't able to read Spot's body language beyond a few simple things. I flunked the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory by answering that yes, animals talked to me--conversely, that same answer may have boosted my CAP score. Dawn was giving me a look that said 'whatever, ' but then her reality was that everything was living--of course the rock was alive! That's how the People of the Jaguar viewed the world around them. "We're now about 50,000 kilometers out. I have remotes looking it over closely, but I get the impression that I'm going to have to go in person. That means I'll have to put a space suit on. It's like those leaf capes you sometimes wore only it keeps air in."