The Duelists in the Grove

There is a somewhat interesting story behind this particular holoprint. I'll tell it to you, if my husband hasn't talked your ear off. Look at him! He so wishes he could tell you the story himself; you can see it on his face! But, he knows that he wouldn't be able to tell it nearly so well, since I was there, and he wasn't.

(I'm only teasing you, love.)

It was several dozen revolutions ago. My husband, it will not surprise you, was entertaining a guest. Who was it, love? Some former rhepsil diplomat? Oh yes, he preferred to still be called the Prime Emissary, even though he'd been retired even longer than you.

To be truthful, I found him rather pompous and tiresome, and rather than sour their reunion with my distaste for him--rhepsils are surprisingly sensitive to such things--I decided to go for a walk. I took a tubecar to the Grove of Solitude, one of my favorite of the Ring's arboreta. It is a fascinating place; though it is often in fact somewhat crowded, the space is designed in such a way that it very often seems as though you are alone. I imagine sound-canceling and false image projecting technologies play a part in this illusion. Now, when one enters to Grove, one my choose how strong of an illusion of solitude one experiences. One may choose to be unseen, and also see no others; or, one may choose to be freely seen, and freely see all others (provided they have also chosen to be seen). One may also choose combinations of those two states; for example, one my choose to be able to see others, but remain unseen oneself. Though admittedly it is somewhat voyeuristic, that is the experience that I chose when I entered the Grove of Solitude.

I meandered throughout the Grove, observing those who chose to be observable. Many simply walked as I did. Many more sat as if in prayer or meditation. Some sang or gave monologues that only they, and those of us who chose to be able to, could hear; one, a s'thrunney, expounded upon his various sufferings and personal tragedies in a manner that was so exaggerated it was almost comical. On three separate occasions, I came across beings--two pairs, and one small group--engaged in the act of copulation. Whether they simply did not care that they could be seen, or received an exhibitionist thrill from it, I do not know. But, having an education in both xenobiology and cultural xenology, I found myself fascinated by these aliens' various physical configurations, and by the emotional attitudes they displayed to their partners. However, such scenes are not uncommon in the Grove, and so, having witnessed such things before, I moved on.

A while later, I received a warning pip from the Grove's overseer system. The OS of the Grove is designed to be as unobtrusive as possible, and only engages visitors under very specific conditions; if one is about to blunder into an individual who had chosen to be invisible, for example. The OS informed me that a refereed event of probable violence would soon take place in a section of the Grove very near where I was; though the risk to myself or any of the participants was very mild, the OS felt it prudent to warn me. My interest was piqued, so I inquired whether the participants of this event were observable. I was informed that they were, and given directions to their location (though the OS tried to gently dissuade me), and within moments I was an invisible spectator at an alien duel.

There were nine of them, gathered loosely near the center of a flat clearing in the Grove. They were tall, striding beings with an air of great strength and agility about them. They were octopods, with four long legs and then four arms folded around the bases of their thick necks. What I took to be breathing tubes slithered intermittently in and out of orifices on the sides of their necks, and sheaths of leathery skin occasionally pulled back to reveal trios of serrated, off-white tusks. Six of the nine were roughly three meters tall and pale green with subtle splotches of pink. Of the remaining three, two were over four meters tall, and a darker, warmer shade of green, with brick-red spots. The final member of the assemblage, a being seemingly made of pure sinew and intimidation, was a five-meter tyrannosaur, her skin (for I would soon learn that these larger specimens were the females) nearly black and her spots a livid scarlet.

I did not recognize the species, so I queried the Grove's OS for information, which it obligingly began to upload into my extramemory. I learned at one that they were called harpax, and that, as I have said, the three larger ones were female and the smaller ones were male. I learned that they were a warlike species (indeed, their women wore gauntlets on their forearms and brandished hooks and curved swords nearly as long as themselves, all apparently made of dark, shiny wood), though their ways had been softened considerably since their integration into the Community. They still segregated themselves into distinct tribes and clans, often in rivalry with one another. After learning that last detail, I noted that four of the nine, consisting of three males and the terrifying black and red giant, wore scarves died blue and pale gold, while the remaining five wore scarves of red and green. It appeared that I was about to witness an old tribal rivalry play itself out through combat. I found the notion exhilarating.

I noticed something tiny moving above the warriors' heads, and saw it to be an overseer drone, the referee of this confrontation. Scarcely larger than a pebble, it was nevertheless capable of instantly subduing myself and every alien in the clearing, and then some. Elecromagnetic pulses, blasts of infrasound, bursts of any wavelength of radiation, all were in its purview. I wondered what method of nonlethal force it would use if the harpax got out of hand.

The terrifying giant pulled back her cheek membrane, revealing curving mandibles etched with tribal insignia. She let out series of clacks and staccato rasps and emitted a pair of dissonant hoots from her fully-extruded breathing tubes. Her male allies let out similar hoots as if in reinforcement. The opposing side answered, the males hooting and the females hooting and clacking. The females' cheek membranes slowly drew back and their pink breathing tubes withdrew sharply into their necks; when the breathing tubes reemerged, they were starkly white. Obviously, a challenge had been issued. It was all so fascinating that it was several moments before I realized I had no idea what they were saying.

I addressed the OS about this. It informed me that it did have an available translation patch for the harpax' common language, these individuals appeared to be speaking in an archaic tribal tongue which it did not have in its files. It was currently in communication with one of the archives on the planet below in an attempt to rectify this situation. The overseer system was doing this for its own benefit more than mine; it was in charge of making sure no one here got seriously hurt, a job made more difficult by its not being able to understand was was being said. In any case, hoping to catch at least part of the conversation, I downloaded harpax common.

The clattering conversation between the rival females appeared to be growing more heated. Their clacks became sharper, their rasps rougher, their hoots sourer. They repeatedly extended and then quickly pulled pack their cheek membranes as if to emphasize what they had just said. Their tracheae sucked in and with almost convulsive rapidity. The females readjusted their grips on their weapons and flexed the dewclaws on their forelegs. The chorused hoots of the males seemed to reach a crescendo, and all of the sudden the fight was on.

The two green females fought in unison against the larger black female. The two greens each held a hook and a sword, while the black held two hooks and a sword. The hooks were apparently used to deflect and wrest the opponents' swords, though it seemed to me that they would make perfectly deadly weapons in their own right. Fascinatingly, despite the obvious speed and power of these creatures, the pacing of their fight was more like a dance, with long, smooth movements, precise and unhurried transitions between stances, elegant bends and pirouettes. The rhythmic, pulsing hoots of their attendant males strengthened the impression of a dance. I would later learn that the harpax's speed and power was precisely the reason for their slow, controlled style of combat; their skill was so great and their reactions so swift that, in almost any instant of the fight, to go openly on the offensive was suicide. So, they moved in an almost choreographed series of shifting stances, ever watchful for imperfections in their opponents' technique that would provide an opportunity to attack without great risk to themselves. I found it utterly beautiful. The overseer orb danced to an fro above them, giving the impression of fretful anxiousness, though surely the conditions of its interfering in the fight had been precisely calibrated before it began.

The dance did not take long. The slightly smaller of the two green females--and, I assume, the younger and less experienced--fancied she saw an opening in the black's defenses, and moved in. In a movement almost too quick to see, the black swung her hook to a point on her opponent's sword just above where the green held it in her hands, and yanked it effortlessly away. In nearly the same instant, the black's own sword arced upward, the blade so sharp it hardly whispered. The green female's sword, one of her arms, and one of her breathing tubes, still blanched white, landed in the soft green grass. The combatants' dance, the fretful pacing of the overseer orb, and time itself stopped for a paralyzed instant, and then two thin jets of umber-colored blood squirted from the green female's wounds. Her hoots of agony were thin and gargled. Here allies' hoots were wrenchingly dissonant, while the hoots of the black's males swelled victoriously.

Though only for a second or two. Just as the black female swung her sword along a path that would surely have brought it through the other green female's neck, the overseer orb took action. Even from my vantage point tens of meters away I felt the rumble of the infrasound blast. Seven harpax collapsed stupidly to the ground. Almost inconceivably, the huge black female remained on her feet. She had withstood the wave of sound which had brought her fellows to the ground, though just barely; her steps toward the intact green female were wobbly and unsure. The overseer orb seemed flustered as the black female lifted her sword to drive down through her opponent.

Thinking more quickly than I ever have either before or sense--and apparently more quickly than the overseer orb--I revoked my invisibility, stepped forward, and, clapping my hands (no noise I made with my mouth would have been loud enough) shouted in harpax common: "Wait!"

The black female's beak swung towards me. The overseer orb, finally gathering its wits, unleashed another of its weapons. The electric shock caused the black female to finally topple, though I hit the ground first. I've always thought that taking me down as well as the harpax was unnecessary, and afterward I even filed a complaint to that effect.

My first stimulus after swimming back to consciousness was a chime in my ear that the files for the older harpax language had downloaded successfully.

A pack of enforcer drones descended from some unseen place to escort the harpax away, chastising them for taking their sporting duel too far. Another pair of drones helped clean me up--the body looses control in often messy ways when shocked--and then allowed me to continue on my way. I chose to go back home. Tiresome as my husband's visitor may have been, I had had quite enough excitement in the Grove of Solitude.

*******

I drew and rendered this alien over ten months ago. What kept me from showing it until now was a case of writer's block. I originally intended on posting a full-length short story along with it, and though the story got off to a good start, I could not seem to finish it. I couldn't really tell you why; my attempts at bringing it past a certain point just felt awkward, and as more time went on my original vision for it got less clear in my head. I think the last time I added anything to it was in May or June. A large freelance job, and later TAD took too much time and attention for me to really add anything to it.

Seeing that I wasn't going to finish that earlier story any time soon, I often thought about giving it a shorter treatment, like most of my other Ring aliens. Today I was faced with the pleasant prospect of several totally free hours, so I said fuck it, let's write.

I would still like to finish that original story and post it here sometime. It broadened the Ring universe considerably more than this one did (though this one was certainly fun to write), giving much more info about harpax culture and the harpax homeworld, politics in the Ring universe, and the history of the narrator of the other stories. It even finally gives the narrator a name.

But, until then...just enjoy yourselves, I guess.

PS- I noticed after drawing this, and someone on another site also commented, that this creature bears a resemblance in general shape and gait to Alex Ries' (Abiogenisis) Birrin [link] . I apologize if anyone, especially Alex, thinks the resemblance is too close; it wasn't conscious or intentional.