Tigra Page 6

  In her third year at the Academy she opted for specialist training as an SAG commando. The SAG, for Space, Atmosphere and Ground, were the fiercest fighters in the Union military. They were schooled in all aspects of warfare, and were trained to fight in any environment. Their units were given the best weapons and most sophisticated attack ships, and yet they were just as deadly in hand-to-hand combat. To survive the training one had to be rugged, intelligent, adaptive—and brutal. Mercy and pity were expunged from a commando's vocabulary. When the Union wanted to punish the Coalition, they sent in SAG units.

  If the weapons were sophisticated, the soldiers were somewhat less so. They might be the hardiest and best-trained of all the Union forces, but they prided themselves on being rude, crude social misfits. Out-drink, out-fight, out-fuck—that was their motto. Fatalities in SAG were the highest in the military, and the odds of returning home from a mission were never great. They took a certain macabre pride in this fact and openly flaunted their precarious existence, taking crazy chances and driving themselves and each other to their limits.

  Jeena fit right in. She excelled in the physical demands of training and in battle felt invincible and invulnerable, always pushing herself and her team to their limits and loving the feel of the adrenaline that flowed during battle. A veteran of a dozen battles, she won numerous medals for valor and began to gain the attention of the military brass.

  Then came her capture and the prison and all that had once made her strong was now a poison that was slowly eating away at her.

  * * * *

  Jeena lifted the ladle to her lips and tasted the stew. She had been trying her hand at cooking during the last few months, and although she had little prior experience, she thought she was getting pretty good. The meat had come from a wolla she had brought down with the pulse rifle earlier in the week. The stew was ready, and she looked around the camp, calling for Samson.

  She'd finally accepted that the cub was with her to stay, and reluctantly decided he needed a name. She settled on Samson as much for his predilection for knocking down everything in sight as for his beautiful golden fur.

  He seemed quite intelligent, and she was able to teach him several commands, the most often used of which was “no.” It was a word whose meaning he seemed to grasp only vaguely.

  Hearing his named called, the cub came barreling up the hill, skidding to a stop just before knocking Jeena into the fire. She patted his head, smiling as he began to babble.

  That was her word for it. It had begun three weeks earlier—a high-pitched series of sounds the cub repeated throughout the day. At first she worried he was choking or ill, but as the weeks passed he showed no sign of distress. Jeena had searched the records for any information concerning this odd behavior, but there was no mention of it in either the colonist's records or the FYS report. Vicki analyzed recordings Jeena made but was unable to shed any light.

  Initially, the vocalizations had surprised and fascinated her, but lately had become monotonous and slightly irritating. Ignoring the sounds, she poured the stew into two bowls, setting Samson's on the ground. He stood over it and, as always, waited for it to cool.

  Jeena ate slowly, shaking her head. I'm really spoiling this fur-ball, she thought. But what could she do? At some point, the cub had noticed she only ate cooked food and from then on steadfastly refused to eat raw meat, begging instead for hers.

  What a strange animal he is. She had studied him carefully. His paws, which at first glance resembled an Earth cat's, were far more complex. The individual “fingers” were long and graceful, and he had a workable opposable thumb. He had even begun using his paws to grasp the ball she threw to him at times.

  Vicki explained that Ararat had once been covered in dense jungles and offered the theory that, like man, the tigras may have developed thumbs to grasp limbs. It seemed plausible enough, but Jeena found the idea of big cats swinging through the trees a bit disconcerting.

  Then there was his face. Although it had the general features of a feline, with its long nose and protruding whiskers, the muscles seemed ... well, wrong, as if there were too many of them. It gave him a plasticity of expression that seemed out of place for an animal—he could give a sort of smile when happy, or screw up his face when displeased. He had even tried to mimic her by sticking out his tongue, with acceptable results.

  Jeena drank easily from the whiskey bottle as she ate. Some days were like that. She would awaken from dark, disturbing dreams she'd spend the rest of the day trying to forget. The alcohol helped, but it seemed to take more each time—it was not yet dusk, and her head was already spinning.

  She rationalized her downward spiral to herself. Why the hell shouldn't I get drunk? God knows I've earned it. In fact, what difference does it make if I get piss-drunk every night? I don't have to report to anyone. She smiled grimly. Unscheduled R-and-R, that's what this is—rest and rye.

  She lit a cigar and rubbed her forehead as the headache began.

  Samson finished his meal and came to her, laying his head in her lap. He had grown fast these last few months and now stood almost as high as her waist. He had picked up a sense for her moods and seemed to understand she was not feeling well tonight.

  Jeena stroked his head.

  "It's all right, Samson. Whiskey is mankind's oldest painkiller,” she said, slurring her words slightly. “Give a human enough booze and you could cut off his head with barely a word of protest.” She took another drink and stood on wobbly legs, raising the bottle to the sky. "Right, Sergeant?" she screamed. "C'mon, hurt me now, you bastard! I'm ten feet tall and laserproof!"

  The bottle slipped from her hand and smashed on the ground. Mumbling and cursing, she staggered to her tent, passing out as she hit the cot.

  She awoke crying before the sun was up. It had been a long night of dirty, laughing faces and hard, grasping hands, of pain and stench and filth and helplessness. Her head was pounding, still full of memories that wouldn't fade, of voices that refused to die. And there was Samson, already outside the tent knocking over crates and cans and making a racket that blended with the noises in her head into a fugue of sound that threatened to engulf her.

  Jeena clasped her hands over her ears, screaming for him to stop and the voices to go away, but the clamor rose until it sounded like laughter. Lurching from the tent, she grabbed the shotgun and leveled it through tear-blinded eyes at the tormentor in her mind.

  "Stay away from me, goddam you! Don't touch me!"

  * * * *

  Samson jumped at the shout, causing the crates and cans to tumble around him, pinning him in. He saw the tear-streaked face staggering toward him, and sensed her anger. Whether in a burst of sudden insight or from an instinct for survival, he understood his danger and began desperately clawing at the debris keeping him prisoner. He watched helplessly as she raised the weapon. Unable to move, he began to whine and cry, and then suddenly in a high-pitched voice, he cried out a single word.

  "No!"

  * * * *

  The raging storm in Jeena's mind was disturbed. A sound she couldn't quite identify drew her attention away from the laughing face before her. It began to shift and fade. Confused, she lowered her weapon and wiped her eyes, a simple action that seemed to still the voices in her head. Now, she could see Samson partially buried under a pile, repeating his pitiable cry over and over: “No! No! No!"

  Comprehension suddenly returned.

  "It can't be. It's ... not possible,” she whispered. She took one halting step toward him and fell, collapsing into darkness on the yellow sands of Ararat.

  Chapter 6

  "Language shapes the way we think, and determines what we can think about."

  Benjamin Lee Whorf

  20th century Earth linguist

  Encyclopedic History of the Union, 22nd ed.

  Jeena came to, certain she had been dreaming. That certainty evaporated when she found Samson cowering under the wing of the ship. His voice was high and squeaky, but there was no mis
taking the word “No” when she tried to approach him.

  She finally managed to grasp him and cradled his head in her arms, holding him there until he stopped struggling and settled down. She sat in the shade of the wing and let the enormity of the situation sink in.

  It simply wasn't possible. Humans had been on Ararat for more than two hundred years. If tigras were sentient, surely it would have been discovered by the FYS and announced throughout the galaxy. Why wasn't it known? Or if it was, why had the knowledge been suppressed? Certainly, the colonists had given no indication that tigras were anything more than dumb beasts, and her only other encounter with them had affirmed that conclusion.

  Then how to explain Samson?

  Genetic mutation? She discarded the idea immediately. No realistic combination of genetic events could have taken a single brute animal and imbued him with sentience. It made no sense.

  When she was sure Samson had begun to trust her again, and was convinced her own legs would not give out, she entered the ship, setting Samson on the floor.

  "Vicki."

  "Sir."

  "Analyze everything you have in your memory concerning Ararat. Look for anything relating to the tigras and intelligence."

  "Affirmative.” There was a pause, then: “The Five-Year Survey calculated a mean intelligence rating for tigras of thirty-seven-point-five. No other information is available."

  Thirty-seven? Well, that was high for an animal, but no more so than for an Earth chimp.

  "What about speech? Anything about their ability to mimic human voices?"

  "I have a paper written by an early settler concerning occasional crying sounds produced at times of stress by tigra cubs. The author concludes that it is a behavior only seen in the juveniles. Shall I print a hard copy for you?"

  "No. Nothing else? Nothing on possible sentience?"

  "I have no information concerning sentience in tigras. No sentient being other than man has ever been discovered."

  Yes, yes I know. More than four hundred years of human exploration and mankind is still alone. There had been scattered traces of what some thought were the remains of ancient, dead civilizations found on a few worlds, but these had been fragmentary and inconclusive. It was an article of faith that mankind was the only sentient species in the galaxy, or at least in the quadrant that man had explored.

  Jeena looked down at the cub.

  "Well, now, I guess we're going to have to test that, won't we?"

  * * * *

  In truth, Jeena was certain she was dealing with a kind of mimicry, much like what was seen in Earth parrots. Her certainty did not last long. Like the rupture of a dam, Samson's first utterance unleashed a torrent of words the number of which increased daily. It was more than a reflexive echo, she was sure. She was certain he was trying to communicate. True, it was primitive and clumsy—single words indicating something he wanted—but no more so than a human child.

  As the weeks passed, she watched him struggle to pronounce new words, his face contorting to reproduce the alien, human sounds. His soft palate had yet to fully form so his pronunciation carried a slight lisp, giving his voice another eerie similarity to that of a small child.

  His speed of advancement amazed her. It was as though his mind, long dormant in a dark sleep of ignorance, had been awakened and was now making up for lost time.

  Jeena could come up with no reasonable explanation for this sudden intelligence, but once the initial shock wore off she became less concerned with finding an answer and more involved with helping him through the learning process.

  * * * *

  She knelt in front of the tent, Samson sitting before her. She pointed to herself.

  "Jeena,” the cub answered in his high, singsong voice.

  "Good,” she said, and pointed to him.

  "Samson."

  "Very good.” She reached behind her back and brought out a small ball.

  "Ball!” he screeched, and began spinning excitedly in circles. “Ball ball ball ball,” he repeated until she finally threw it.

  At first nouns comprised his entire vocabulary, but he soon learned to modify them with simple verbs—"ball” became “play ball.” It took only a few weeks for his sentences to increase in complexity by the addition of short prepositional phrases—"play ball” became “play ball with me."

  The process continued.

  Jeena understood that he was taking all his verbal clues from her, yet the idea that alien communication could develop along such human lines astonished her. She made extensive notes and holo recordings of his progress. Whenever she finally contacted the Union, this information could prove invaluable in answering the mind-boggling question of how this development was possible.

  He had a child's natural curiosity, and eventually that led him to question his own beginnings. He listened intently to Jeena's rather graphic description of the entire reproductive process, not quite getting it all but fascinated nonetheless. He seemed to grasp instinctively that she was not his mother yet never asked for details concerning her or her whereabouts, something Jeena was silently grateful for. She still could not reconcile this incredibly human-like mind with the snarling animal she had been forced to kill.

  If Samson was mimicking a human childhood, it was a childhood completely alien to Jeena. Where she had been a dark and sullen child, he was impossibly happy, awaking each day bouncing and singing the few children's songs she had taught him. She did not remember many. He was painfully anxious to please and would eagerly attempt any task she set him to. He would struggle and puzzle over each new problem, searching for a solution, and she could almost see the light go off over his head when he finally had it.

  She soon realized Samson's growth was extending beyond his vocabulary. The logical and linear reasoning required for speech and problem-solving were having profound effects on other aspects his behavior as well.

  I can see it in the way he moves, in the way he responds to his environment. Instinct is losing its grip on him. The more he learns, the more firmly his brain is becoming wired in a human pattern.

  Then came the morning she awoke to find him playing dress-up in her T-shirt and sandals and suddenly understood that this tigra was no longer an animal at all. In his mind at least, he was human.

  * * * *

  "Rrrrr ... Jeena,” Samson whispered. He still produced a soft purr prior to speaking, but even this was rapidly disappearing

  Asleep on the cot, Jeena lifted one eyelid and found herself staring at an enormous wet black nose.

  "What is it, Samson?” she muttered.

  "Gotta pee,” he pleaded.

  "You little shit, it's not even light out,” she groaned. “Go by yourself if you have to."

  "Noooo,” he whined. “You come with."

  Jeena muttered a curse. Samson knew the way to the latrine, of course, but it was in the high grass out of direct sight of the camp. As she groggily put on her sandals, she considered the incongruity of a wild animal afraid of the outdoors. Except that Samson was in no way wild, and she had stopped thinking of him as an animal at all. She wasn't sure what she considered him—except a pain-in-the-ass prepubescent perhaps.

  The sun was beginning to rise as they made their way back to the camp, and Jeena noticed a cloud of dust to the west. Samson noticed it, too.

  "What's that, Jeena?"

  She squinted, using her hand to shade her eyes from the sun's low rays.

  "I'm not sure. Looks like horses."

  The cloud was moving toward the south.

  "What are horses?"

  "Earth animals. People ride them sometimes."

  "People? You mean more people like you?” he asked excitedly.

  Jeena gnawed her lower lip. “Maybe. I'm not sure. Looks like they'll be coming close to us. I suppose we should check it out,” she said uncertainly.

  Samson was in full agreement. They stopped by the camp, and she grabbed the binoculars before the two of them headed in the direction of the moving cloud.
Normally, Samson would race by her as he ran then slow down to let her catch up. Today he chose to stay close to her, caught between excitement and apprehension at the unknown.

  "I didn't know there were more people besides you,” he said as they ran.

  "Of course, you did. I've told you about Earth."

  Samson clicked his tongue. “Rrrrr ... No, I meant here."

  "Yes, there are a few. Some people came here a long time ago. Probably not many left."

  "How come you don't live with them?"

  "I wasn't sure there were any still here. Besides, I haven't had time to go look for them. I've been busy here with you."

  "Oh.” He considered that for a moment, then: “So are there more like me here, too? More tigras?"

  Jeena did not break her stride. “I don't know. I hope not. Too many stinking animals on this planet as it is."

  They'd gone about five miles, and she was just beginning to breathe hard when they came to a cliff overlooking a narrow gorge. Muffled voices drifted up to them. Crouching down and warning Samson to be quiet, she crawled to the edge of the cliff and peered over.

  Below her were the three animals responsible for the dust cloud. They looked somewhat like large horses, slightly bigger, Jeena guessed, than the Clydesdales they resembled. She recognized them from Vicki's tutorial as kytars, an animal native to the planet. They were a deep crimson color with long, white fetlocks and were thick-boned, heavy animals. Their heads were odd-looking, with a beard like a goat's and a stumpy horn projecting from their foreheads. The overall look was not so much unicorn as rhinoceros.

  The kytars were saddled, but their riders were on their feet, circling an animal they had cornered in the gorge. The animal was a tigra. It snarled and paced in the cleft of the gorge, swiping its claws at the approaching men. One of the men was swinging a loope roped and suddenly threw it over the animal's head, dragging it to the ground. A second man hurled a weighted bola against the animal's back legs, binding them together. Quickly, the men descended on the tigra, tying it expertly while carefully avoiding the flailing legs and snapping jaws. They obviously had experience in dealing with these animals.