Chapter 9: Tyrant Lizard

Jaeger couldn’t feel so much as a vibration through the floor, and there was no sound from the engine, he might have been standing still if it hadn’t been for the trees that were rushing past the windows at alarming speed. He looked out over the band of greenery, the elevated mag-lev track giving him a better view of his surroundings. It looked much like it had from the air, trees and grass, rolling hills and white structures in all kinds of shapes and sizes. But from this angle, he could really appreciate the effort that had gone into the landscaping, the way that every tree and hill seemed precisely placed to obscure something else from view. In a way, it reminded him of the Pinwheel, an artificial structure that used clever trickery to present an illusion of nature.

The city center was rushing towards them, the spires and glass towers even more artsy and exotic when seen from this distance, but Maza had said that they would be visiting the wall first. They seemed to be going in the wrong direction.

Before he could bring it up with her, he noticed that another train car was rushing towards them along the track, his heartbeat quickening as he watched it approach. The two cars were going so fast that they would probably vaporize if they heat each other.

“Uh ... Maza? There’s another car on the same track as ours. Maza? Maza!”

Moments before the two collided, the cars shifted, sliding to either side of the cylindrical track as if they were falling off it. The interior stayed level, like it was gyroscopically stabilized, Jaeger barely feeling the motion as he watched the other car zip past. It then returned to its original position, the aliens fluttering their feathers and laughing at his reaction.

“I guess that’s one way to get two cars on the same track,” he mumbled, composing himself. He glanced over his shoulder at Baker, who seemed to have enjoyed the scare, a wide grin on his face.

They reached a Y-bend in the track, and the car shot off to the right, the mag-lev system was apparently much more versatile than he was accustomed to. Now they were heading in the direction of the circular wall, he could see it slowly rising in the distance. He craned his neck to peer out of the windows as they passed over a residential district, watching the dome-shaped dwellings fly past below. Each one was surrounded by gardens, and they were all near a water source, you’d have to pay out of the nose to live somewhere like that on Earth. Buying a square foot of land was probably equal to the cost of paving it with an inch of gold plating.

Behind him, Baker was making more conversation with his neighbors, more interested in their social system than in the scenery it seemed.

“So is Maza your leader?”

“No,” the Valbaran who was seated next to him replied, Jaeger recognizing her as Ayau. The more time he spent with the flock, the more he was able to differentiate between the individuals, they all had subtle features that set them apart. “We are all of equal standing within the flock.”

“Then how do you decide who to follow?”

“If someone takes the initiative and nobody objects, then we follow them. The flock has no leader.”

“And if two of you disagree?”

“Then we reach a consensus.”

The wall grew larger and larger, it was built like a dam, with sloped faces that were thinner on top. There were instruments and windows lining it, miscellaneous machinery that could have been anything from comms gear to weather monitoring equipment, and he could see spots near the bottom where water drained from pipes to fill the rivers and lakes within the city. There were buildings on top of it spaced at intervals, too small to house laser batteries. They might be simple guard towers, he would find out soon enough.

The track branched off again, this one leading towards the top of the wall at an incline, and the train car finally came to a stop at another awning that protected the passengers from the elements. Once they had all disembarked, the car looped back around, vanishing from view as it slid back down the track.

Jaeger stepped out from beneath the awning, making his way towards the flimsy guard rail that stood between him and the two hundred foot drop on the far side of the wall. Immediately gusts of wind very nearly knocked him off balance, and he looked out over a wild wilderness that extended to the horizon, forests and rivers breaking up the grassy plains. It was a little cooler up here, more pleasant, though still stiflingly hot. Maza sidled up beside him and leaned on the guard rail, looking down the sheer face of the titanic structure as her head-tentacles blew gently in the breeze.

Behind him, he could see the ever-present skyscrapers of the city center, shining brightly in the sunlight. You could probably see them from a hundred miles away on a clear day, they were almost like lighthouses.

“Are you afraid?” she asked. “Val’ba’ra’nay like high places, but I don’t know about Earth’nay.”

“I’m a pilot, I can handle heights. So this is what most of your planet looks like?”

“The majority, at least where we find it most comfortable. There is ice at the poles, and we have some jungles, oceans, and mountains too. We let nature reign outside of our walls. The rivers find their own path, the lakes pool where they may, the forests and plants grow where they choose. We live in our little pockets of order, trying to minimize our impact on the world.”

He looked to his left and right, taking in the magnificence of the wall. It was huge, with a wide walkway that went all the way along the top, interrupted at intervals by the small structures that he had spotted on the way up. It looked a lot like the great wall of China, if you painted it white and made it perfectly circular, of course. It wasn’t made from bricks or stone, none that he could see at least, it was constructed from the omnipresent metal paneling that the Valbarans seemed to favor. One would have expected it to heat up to unbearable levels in the direct glare of the sun, but it was cool to the touch.

“Those towers are lookout posts,” she explained, following his gaze. “They also monitor weather, migration patterns, air pollution and things like that.”

“Migration patterns?” Jaeger asked. “Migration patterns of what?”

“The animals that we hunt, and the predators that we need to watch out for. Come, with any luck, we might be able to see some.”

The prospect seemed to excite Baker more than it did Jaeger, who immediately set off towards the nearest lookout post.

“Wait,” one of the Valbarans said, her feathers flaring with confusion. “Surely you aren’t going to walk all that way?”

The two humans shared a glance. What were they talking about? The nearest structure was only a half mile away the most. The alien gestured to what initially looked like a bicycle rack which was placed beside the little train station, stocked with small, two-wheeled scooters with a long handle. She took one by the handlebars and wheeled it out into the center of the walkway, stepping onto the footrest, the two wheels placed to the left and right of it. He heard the whir of an electric motor, and then she leaned the handle forwards, the device setting off up the path at jogging speed.

Jaeger had to stifle a laugh. It was a ridiculous looking mode of transportation, doubly so with the strange alien standing atop it.

“Just lean in the direction you want it to go,” she explained, circling back around. “It’s easy.”

“When in Rome,” Baker said with a shrug, joining the Valbarans as they picked out their own wheeled platforms. Jaeger rolled his eyes and chose one for himself, standing precariously on the polymer footrest. It was textured for better grip, but it was too small for a human. He had to hunch over unnaturally to reach the handle, and the toes of his boots spilled over the front.

His first attempt sent the device toppling over, throwing him to the ground, much to the amusement of the Valbarans. His second try went a little better, and he began to get the hang of the alien vehicle. Baker did a lap around him, already an expert it seemed.

“What, you can fly a Beewolf, but you can’t ride a scooter? Come on Bullseye.”

Grumbling under his breath, Jaeger set off after his companions, wobbling occasionally as he struggled to keep the thing under control. He soon felt the wind on his face, his sweat helping to cool him as he drove alongside the flock, the supports of the handrail zipping past beside him. He wanted to take in some more of the vistas, but he was scared to take his attention off the pathway, these scooters were death traps. They were going fairly slow, maybe ten miles per hour at the most, but it could still land him a scuffed knee if he fell.

“So, I noticed that you don’t like to walk very far,” he said as he drove up beside Maza and tried to match pace with her. “What’s the deal with that?”

“Do we seem to lack stamina from your perspective?” she asked.

“Yeah. I noticed that you couldn’t walk far on the Rorke before you had to take a break to rest, and when we left the spaceport, your Ensi apologized for making us walk so far. Now we’re riding scooters when we could be walking.”

“It’s hard to say, I don’t really have a frame of reference.”

“I can run a mile in about eight minutes, for example.”

She paused, doing some math in her head, then her eyes widened.

“An ‘entire’ mile?” she exclaimed in disbelief. “A Val’ba’ra’nay can run at full sprint for maybe ten or fifteen seconds. You must have incredible endurance to be able to run for eight minutes without tiring.”

“Oh, we can run for longer than that if we pace ourselves,” he said. “Twenty-five miles is about the standard distance for a marathon. Back in P.T, we used to run twelve miles in three hours with seventy pounds of gear on our backs.”

“That’s ... monstrous,” she marveled as she looked him up and down, Jaeger doing his best not to fall off his scooter and ruin his new image.

“Back in our prehistory, we used to chase down animals during a hunt,” he added. “We ran them down until they collapsed from exhaustion.”

“Can you do it now?” Maza asked, looking at him with bright eyes and a yellow flurry from her headdress.

“Er ... I suppose so.”

“Yeah, Jaeger,” Baker laughed from somewhere behind him. “Unless livin’ on the Rorke has made you soft?”

“I’m not ‘that’ out of practice,” Jaeger complained. He slowed his scooter, swerving for a moment as he tried to keep his balance, then stepped off it. Maza stopped to watch him eagerly, the other aliens doing the same, Baker grinning mischievously. He lifted the vehicle and rested it across his shoulders, itself probably a good fifty or sixty pounds, cursing himself for running his mouth. Now he’d have to jog the quarter mile that remained, and the heat wouldn’t be doing him any favors.

He began to jog at a brisk pace, his boots hammering on the metal beneath him as he passed by Maza. She leaned forward on her scooter, driving alongside him as she watched him break out into a run. He covered the ground quickly, arriving at the foot of the building in a couple of minutes. He set the scooter that he had been carrying on the ground, doubling over to catch his breath and wiping the sweat from his forehead with his sleeve.

“Amazing!” Maza said, bringing her vehicle to a stop beside him. “You ran all that way!”

Coza seemed even more impressed, standing beside her scooter with her hands on her hips as she watched him silently. She had seemed the most perturbed back on the Rorke when she had found out that their planetary defenses were inadequate, and now she was seeing another human attribute that surpassed their own. As exciting as first contact with an alien species was, it was also turning their world upside-down, challenging their long-held beliefs. Jaeger would have to keep in mind that these aliens were individuals, that not all of them would react the same way.

“It can’t be that surprising,” he said, panting. “Surely you have animals on Valbara that can run long distance?”

“Not as far as you claim. Although I see now that there’s a tradeoff, humans aren’t very fast in short bursts.”

“And Valbarans are?” he asked. She gave him a wry look, and then turned, setting off down the path until she was maybe five hundred feet away from him. He watched curiously as she stepped off the scooter, then she began to remove her gloves. She popped the seals on the wrists and then placed them beside the scooter, rolling up her sleeves until the two feather sheaths on her forearms were exposed. She flexed them, extending the multicolor plumes as she began to hop on the spot, shaking her limbs and rolling her neck like a runner preparing for a hundred-yard dash.

She then crouched low, her long, straight tail extended rigidly behind her, and her arms held out like she was about to take off. Jaeger watched her muscles bulge beneath her camouflaged suit, her proportionally massive thighs seeming to swell as she used them to propel herself forward, her head low and streamlined. There was a short windup, and then she was at full tilt, her little feet a blur as she raced towards him. The feathers on her arms extended, she was using them like rudders to stabilize herself, reaching speeds that he wouldn’t have thought possible. She covered the distance in about ten seconds, skidding to a halt beside him and using her plumes like air brakes, her chest rising and falling rapidly as she took in deep breaths.

“You ... couldn’t ... outrun me,” she panted, locking her legs as she rested. She really did seem exhausted by the short sprint, but she was right, she ran like a cheetah.

“How fast can you go?” he asked, not even attempting to hide how impressed he was.

“Maybe ... thirty miles per hour ... in your measurements.”

“Jesus,” Baker exclaimed, “that’s about fifty feet per second. She could outpace a racehorse.”

“I’ll go fetch your scooter,” Jaeger said, walking down the path and giving her a minute to recover. These little aliens had some tricks up their sleeves. Not only were they incredibly fast learners according to Evans, but they were far stronger than their size suggested, as well as being inhumanly fast. He picked up the scooter by the handle rather than risk riding it, collecting her gloves along with it and carrying them back to her. She unlocked her legs, thanking him as he passed her the gloves.

“We should have a talk about your biology when we have time,” he said, watching Maza pull her sleeves back down and reconnect the gloves to their seals.

“And yours,” she replied, still out of breath. “You Earth’nay have some hidden talents.”

“Hang on,” Baker said, striding over to the nearest alien. He hooked his hands under Tacka’s armpits and lifted her clear off the floor, holding the timid creature in the air as she flashed her feathers in surprise. He set her down again, leaving the poor creature looking rattled. She was the least conversational out of the flock, and Jaeger couldn’t tell if she was having more trouble with the language than her companions, or if she was just that meek.

“They’re so light,” Baker mused, “they can’t weigh more than about fifty or sixty pounds. You guys have hollow bones, right? Like birds?”

“No, not hollow,” Maza replied. “We have a system of air sacks inside our bodies that are connected to our lungs and fill along with them. They run down our spine between our vertebrae. I’m assuming that you don’t?”

“No, we don’t have anything like that,” Jaeger confirmed.

“Strange, that must make you very heavy. I don’t really know enough about biology to make any comparisons. My flock and I are pilots, not scientists. Our next stop should definitely be a hospital in the city. Maybe you can find out some useful information to take back to your Captain, and our people can learn about yours in turn.”

“That’s a good idea,” he replied with a nod.

They continued on to the lookout post, stepping beneath the arches that held it above the pathway so that pedestrians could pass beneath it unhindered. Jaeger looked up at the featureless underside of the building, wondering how they were supposed to access it. Before he could ask, a circular panel descended. It was like someone had cut out a round section of the floor, propelled by some invisible means. It was probably magnetic again, like the trains.

They stepped onto the platform, and it carried them all up into the tower. The plate returned to its place in the floor, seamless and with no visible break in the metal. They found themselves in a small control room, or at least small by human standards, the walls lined with blinking consoles and readouts that were all at Valbaran height.

“There’s nobody here?” Baker asked.

“No,” Maza replied. “It’s mostly automated, but they can be manned if they need to be. We’re just here for the telescope.”

She walked over to the wall that faced the exterior of the city, tapping at some touch panels with her fingers. There was what looked like a large television mounted on the wall, with rounded corners and a slightly convex screen, which flared to life. It showed a magnified view of the wilderness beyond the wall, and she manipulated the camera as she panned across the forests and fields.

“There are usually some herd animals roaming around at this time of the year,” she said, toggling the magnification. “There’s a Teth’rak who holds a territory of a few hundred square miles that extends to the wall on this side, she’s always a crowd pleaser.”

“What’s a Teth’rak?” Baker asked.

“You’ll find out if I can just ... there we go.”

The camera was now centered on a small lake, beside which perhaps two dozen animals were standing around in a herd. Some were drinking, others pivoting their small heads on their long necks as they watched out for predators. They looked to Jaeger like ostriches, but a little more reptilian. They were covered in dull brown feathers that were tipped with white, their skin scaly and tan in color where it was visible on their long legs and faces. They had large, unblinking eyes that didn’t convey much intelligence.

“How far away are they?” he asked, stepping around one of her companions to get a closer look.