Kris Longknife 13.5: Among the Kicking Birds Read online

  There were a few remarks about eating dead meat, but there were also plenty more in favor of eating a hearty meal that the old and young didn’t have to run after.

  Off in a corner, Kris watched as a mother, or at least a care giver, regurgitated meat for a small one. So, that was how moms without boobs did it.

  The conversation ended as the four groups turned in among themselves.

  “They’re interested in what we have to offer them,” Jacques whispered softly to Kris. “Now they’re wondering what they can us to give to get this stuff for them. Notice that our Ostrich is heading over to stand with his pa. This may get interesting.”

  If it got interesting, it did at a very low decibel level. There were a lot of backward glances at Kris and her Marines. No doubt, the difference between the trade rifles and the M-6's was not lost on the local elders and hunters.

  Finally, the shipyard Ostrich came back to Kris. “They want to talk more among themselves. I have told them that you want land within our hunting grounds to grow your food. Lots of seeds for you to eat. We do not grow seeds. We gather some to eat with our meat, but this is a very strange thing for us,” he said, dipping his head up and down on his long neck.

  “I see. I see your ways. I have eaten in your mess. I see how one can work here and eat food from somewhere else. Still, it took me many days to grasp such a strange hunt. I will try to help my egg warmer see your strange hunt, but it may take more than one sunset.”

  “Let us eat what our hunters have brought from far away and gnaw at this,” Kris said.

  “Yes, this is a lot to gnaw on among many wise elders,” the young leader said.

  Kris settled back in her gun truck, out of the sun that was growing hotter. One Marine gun rig brought back a load of meat with some very enthusiastic hunters. In no time at all, it was headed back with a new collection of hunters as those from the first hunt joined the talk with their elders.

  Through the morning, trucks came back and left just as quickly.

  “Are they hunting out this area?” Kris asked Jacques.

  “Each shift is going someplace else,” he told Kris. “I think that is what is so exciting to these hunters. One hunts near the rocks. Another hunts close to the trees. Still another near the watering hole. They’re excited to see how many places they can hunt in one day. I think the gun rigs are just as exciting as the rifles.”

  “You may have a point,” Jack said. He’d been quiet most of the day.

  “You okay?” Kris asked.

  “I’m on pain meds. Rule one. Don’t make a fool of yourself,” Jack said wryly

  “Get off your feet and into the truck,” Kris said in not quite an order voice.

  Jack didn’t argue with her, but with a quick nod to Gunny, did as he was told.

  NELLY, HOW BAD WAS THAT ‘FLESH WOUND’?

  JACK’S MEDICAL RECORDS ARE SEALED. I CAN BREAK IN, BUT I THINK THAT WOULD BE DISHONORABLE, KRIS.

  Kris scowled, and settled in to wait. She’d started the ball rolling. There was nothing to do while it rolled around.

  As light gun rigs brought back more food, the discussions among the birds got more animated. Kris had seen enough.

  “Nelly, get me Admiral Benson.”

  “You rang, Admiral,” came only a second later.

  “Who came up with the idea of designing rifles specifically for the Ostriches?”

  “Several, including the boys that were up here working for us. Some folks took them out to a gaming gallery and they loved to shoot, but hated human rifles. They made up one for the shooter game. We modified the design last night and knocked out ten of them. They going over as well as I’d bet?”

  “Probably better. How many more have you got?”

  “Last time I checked, we had forty done out of one hundred ordered. Why?”

  “I need as many as you can get on a longboat, along with eight electric wagons, with say a single axle trailer for each and at least four recharging stations.”

  “Gifts?”

  “Gifts to get the idea across that you want to give us gifts.”

  “They should be down in six hours.”

  “Nelly, get the transport headed back to the mine. Benson, we’ll need as much as this again for the next negotiations.”

  “I figured as much. I’ll have them ready tomorrow morning. Should I drop you down some place to stay tonight.”

  “Temporary quarters would be nice.”

  “I’ll get you some prefabs on the drop. Maybe even a few extra gun trucks and trailers.”

  “Yeah. It looks like this is going to take a while.”

  “Pipra was wondering if you had a deal inked yet.”

  “Tell her to hold her horses. Rome wasn’t built in a day and I doubt they talk my ancestors out of New York with a few beads and trinkets in one afternoon.”

  “You touchy?”

  “No, I just don’t want to go down in the history books with the wrong company.”

  “Change is heading at these folks with the power of an alien base ship.”

  “I know, Admiral. I know,” Kris said with a sigh.

  Talk went on as noon came and went. More food arrived. The hunters were delighted with the rifles. A few of the senior hunters tried to lay claim to the rifles the workers had brought home. Elders may not have known how to read Kris’s face, but the way the Marines held their rifles at the ready got attention.

  The young workers were not hassled further.

  The second pulse of Marines, this time accompanied by electric wagons and more rifles arrived six hours later before matters got out of hand. One of the hunting parties laid out an airstrip closer to the villages.

  Kris distributed the electric carts and wagons, recharging stations and forty rifles with twenty round of ammunition among the elders of the four tribes.

  That took a lot of pressure off the behavior of many of the young bucks. Now it was the elders passing out the gifts to their choice people. There was trouble enough there, but those who lost out in that round of gift giving were quick to listen to the workers and present themselves to Jacques for recruitment.

  “You give them work. They give you food and rifles,” was easily understood.

  “I hope these rifles don’t start a whole lot of trouble,” Jack was heard to mumble.

  “No doubt it will,” Kris said. “We’re surfing the curl of a tidal wave. You got to be quick, careful and ready to change.”

  A small camp quickly grew up on the upstream side of the village. Ostriches were amazed when a small box blew up into a large hut, then turned solid as rock when what looked like strange smelling water was sprayed. The shower and toilet fascinated them, but their proper use eluded them, even when the young returnees tried to explain it.

  Privacy was another thing new to them. Only the words of those who’d been with the humans got across the idea that when a door was closed, you didn’t open it and walk in.

  Marines standing guard helped.

  Kris cuddled up next to Jack and prepared to sleep the night away.

  Unfortunately, it didn’t work out that way.

  Chapter 3

  While the Ostriches fought for honor and fame, they had never had much of anything to fight over. Still, every male had the right to challenge anyone to a fight, anytime. The fights went up to and including kicking their heads off if one didn’t run first.

  Someone challenged one of the rifle holders to a fight. The first challenge was to one of the hunters who had been given a rifle by his chief. That started it.

  Fortunately for the shipyard workers, they put two and two together quickly and beat feet for the Marine camp. The Marines made it immanently clear that they frowned upon people issuing challenges to those under their protection.

  Still, Gunny got Kris up to take in what was happening in the villages located downhill from them, closer to the river.

  “It’s a bloody mess,” he observed.

  “I didn’t see that coming,” Jacques a
dmitted.

  “Isn’t this why they call economics the dismal science?” Kris said. “When there’s too little of what people want, the price goes up. In this case, if you can take it, it’s yours. Jacques, would you feel safe bringing me the elders?”

  “So long as I don’t have a gun and the Marines are in full battle rattle,” the anthropologist answered.

  Kris looked around her encampment. Most of it was very high tech. “Gunny, get me a fire going.” Kris had seen no fire in the Ostrich villages. Something lower tech might be more impressive than indoor plumbing.

  Ten minutes later, Jacques and his Marines returned with four very separate and cautious groups of hunters and elders.

  “How’d it go?” Kris asked.

  “One dumb bird tried to butt chest with a Marine in full battle armor,” Jacques said with a rather grim grin. “He’ll be a long time butting anyone else.”

  The groups of elders held back in the shadows beyond the fire.

  “Gunny, toss some more cow dung on the fire,” Kris ordered. They’d found no wood to burn close to the camp. They had found a lot of the droppings of the grazing animals. The survival manual said it might burn. It did, very brightly.

  No surprise, fire appeared to be totally new to the locals. The gathered elders eyed and its light, then the worker Ostriches that stood with the Marines around it. Slowly, they worked their way into the flames light and warmth. They approached, but stayed well away from Kris and her armed and armored Marines as well as each other.

  Kris and baby had had enough squatting; a Marine brought her out a chair. She also no longer wanted these birds to think of her as their equal. Her attitude was changing. There’s needed to change as well.

  Kris’s eyes swept the birds huddled at the edge of the fire’s light. “I gave you gifts. What have you done with them?” As Kris spoke Nelly translated.

  No one ventured to answer her question.

  “Does your tribe use my gifts to feed you or kick heads until you will not have enough hunters to feed you?”

  Again, there was no answer from the shamed face elders.

  “Should I take back my gifts?” Kris asked.

  The silence to that was broken when one hunter with a rifle muttered something.

  He said no one will take back his rock thrower.

  “Gunny, put a round between his legs.”

  “Corporal,”

  In a blink, an M-6 came up. A shot rang out and a gout of dust rose between the bird’s legs. He jumped up, stung by the dirt and maybe a stone.

  He brought his rifle up. He brought it up but he didn’t put his finger on the trigger. He did not fire.

  Instead, he whirled and ran into the dark.

  Kris turned to the senior yard worker. “Have you explained to your people how the rifles need ammunition? No ammunition. No game. It’s just a big club.”

  “I have tried to show them that. Some people have a hard time seeing what they do not want to see.”

  “Gunny, what kind of ammunition did we distribute?”

  “Four stripper clips of five with each rifle. Most of them shoot more than that today. It takes them a while to get the hang of a sight picture, ma’am.”

  “No doubt.”

  Kris turned back to the elders.

  “Can you hold the water in your hands and walk from the river to here?”

  That got heads slowly shaking.

  “Can you hold the prey herds in one place for you to eat forever?”

  More head were shaking.

  “I give. You give. I give rifles. I want you to give me land my people can build huts like these on,” Kris said, indicating the building behind her. “My people will cause the land to give up food just as my rifles cause the herds to give up meat. We will follow herds that will stay on our land and give us more meat than your herds give you. That is our way. Come and see and it can become your way.”

  “Do you want all our land?” one Elder said, standing up, and making a kick with his right leg, no doubt issuing a formal challenge to Kris if that was her intent.

  “We want only parts of your land that you seldom use,” Kris said. “You use this land to walk through from one of your hunting grounds to another. We will leave land open for you to walk on, but other land, we will use for our food. As a few hunters have feed many people today, so a hand of our hunters can feed a tribe of our people.”

  “A hand feed a tribe?” went like a murmur through the elders.

  “After the next season of rain, you will see,” Kris said.

  “My eggborn never went hungry while he was above the sky where you walk,” one elder said. Apparently, he was the mighty one. The senior yard worker was standing beside him.

  “We do not know hunger,” Kris said. At present, it wasn’t too much of a lie.

  A shot came out of the night, slammed into Kris and knocked her and her chair over.

  Kris found herself staring up at the night sky. On the roof of the hut, a Marine sniper had his rifle up. Three shots answered the one.

  “Got him, Gunny,” the Marine reported.

  Gunny snapped an order and four Marines ran into the night. A minute or so later, they returned dragging the bird who’d muttered before Kris and gotten a round between his legs for his effort.

  The Marines deposited the body by the fire. Gunny was just helping Kris up when one Marine offered her the man’s rifle.

  Kris took it, stripped the bolt, palmed the firing pin, and sniffed the recently fired barrel. She offered the barrel to the shipyard worker.

  He sniffed it. “This was just shot. This is the rifle that shot my leader and employer.”

  Leader was a familiar word on his beak. Employer came out in mangled standard.

  “Does anyone doubt this man owes a blood price?” the space station worker demanded of those still squatting in the dirt on the other side of the campfire from Kris.

  “But where is her blood?” one asked. Even in the local tongue, Kris could hear the shock.

  “You do not beat chest with us,” Kris said. “You do not use our own rifles against us,” Kris said, taking the rifle bullet from her chest and tossing it to the young worker.

  He took the spent round and walked it around the fire for all the elders to get a good look at.

  “You have seen what a bullet looks like,” the worker said. “If you have bitten into meat and found the bullet that killed it, you have seen a bullet like this. This is such a bullet. Look upon the leader of the star walkers. See that this bullet did no harm to her.”

  “I think they just realized who they’re bargaining with,” Jacques whispered to Kris.

  “If you sup with the devil, you’ll need a long spoon,” she said.

  “And I don’t think they have anything nearly long enough for a handle. You will note, however, that none of them are bowing down to you. I still can’t figure out what they use for a god, but you are not one.”

  “I have no problem with that,” Kris said.

  “Is there anyone who demands a blood price from me?” Kris said firmly to the gathered elders.

  They looked at each other. Finally, the father of the senior yard worker spoke. “His blood was upon his own head. It is you who may demand a blood price.”

  “I ask no blood price of a fool. Let his blood price be the lesson you learn here. Elders, control your hunters. Let there be no more blood lost over my gifts. Do this, or there will be no more bullets from me when you have used up those I gave you.

  “As for this rifle,” Kris said, raising the rifle up that had been used to shoot her, she slammed it down. The long wooden stock gave and the rifle was suddenly in two halves.

  “That will happen to any gift used against its giver.”

  The elders now walked into the darkness. The five young birds who had been so excited to return home stayed close to the fire. Jacques went aside with them, then brought them back to nest down close by the fire before returning to Kris.

  “None o
f them ever expected to say it, but they feel safer among us than they do among their own people.”

  “That won’t last. Once they get over the shock of the introduction of rifles, things will settle down.”

  “And then they’ll change some more, Kris. We are a warm wind blowing through here, stirring up all kinds of new. Some is shiny. Some is just new. I know there’s no way to avoid it, but it’s still tough to change.”

  “We’ll come up with a better idea of how to manage the next bunch of tribes,” Kris said.

  “Why not give me the impossible task and call it quits?” Jacques shot back.

  Jack was standing in the doorway. “You’ve got to quit doing this, love.”

  “Well, at least I had my silks on,” was Kris’s answer to both of them.

  “Ah, ma’am,” said the Marine on the roof. “I’m sorry I didn’t get him before he shot you.”

  “If you’d shot him before he took his pot shot, I’d be very upset with you,” Kris answered.

  “Not nearly as upset as I’m going to be,” Gunny muttered from beside Kris.

  “Gunny, the Marines are your charge, but keep this in mind. I can’t have dead locals showing up without good cause.”

  “But I can’t have dead admirals on my soul, ma’am.”

  Jack cleared his throat, diplomatically. “Gunny, that’s why officers get paid the big bucks.”

  “If you say so, General.”

  “I think he just did,” Kris said.

  “Ma’am,” had that sharp twist that said this Gunny did not like what his officers were doing, but they were officers, so he’d put up with them.

  So Kris found herself back in Jack’s arms, her back cuddled up to his front, and his good hand softly warming baby.

  They were not disturbed again that night.

  Chapter 4

  Abby was there as Kris awoke. Cool milk and ginger cookies, if not fresh, were still settling to Kris’s tummy. Breakfast was field rations, eggs and bacon cooked in ten person meals rather than a combat ready breakfast out of a box.

  The senior yard worker was already up and gone into the tribal camps. He returned as Kris finished the part of her breakfast she could stomach. His father and a dozen elders followed.