Remnant Population

“Kuh awk,” Bluecloak said. Cold off. It looked the box over; Ofelia held her breath. It could not know what made the box work or not work. It had not had time enough with the cooler at the center. It could not… Leaning over, Bluecloak peered behind the cooler. With a glance at Ofelia, it leaned lower, reached, and came up with the end of the power cord. “Aaaks kuh,” it said, with the falling intonation that Ofelia now thought meant a question.

She felt colder than the cooler had ever been. How had it caught on so quickly? Small children learned… but they saw someone plug and unplug appliances.

These creatures had no electricity… did they? They could not have understood, with no common language, how it worked. Yet Bluecloak’s questions were so direct… it must be smarter than she had thought. Smarter than humans? She didn’t want to consider that question. “Bzzz makes cold,” Ofelia said. Should she give a label for the cord? She might as well; it would be easier to talk about if she did. “That’s a cord,” she said, touching it. “Cord. Bzzz in cord makes cold.” “Zzzz…” Bluecloak said. “Howhuh laaant aaaks zzzzt.” It paused, giving Ofelia time to arrange Power plant makes electricity in her mind. “Zzzz in cort, zzzz aaaks kuh.”

Yes, electricity in the cord made the cooler cold, but how had it figured out that the electricity traveled in the cord? It should not have been obvious. It could not have seen the wires behind the coolers in the center; they were hidden by the bulk of the boxes. Ofelia nodded, forgetting again that they did not understand nods.

Bluecloak flipped its cloak back, and opened a mesh bag hanging from one of the straps around its body. From the bag, it took a thin cylinder as long as Ofelia’s forearm. She thought it looked like wood or thick stemmed grass. Bluecloak lifted it with one hand, and blew into it, holding the other hand before the open end. Then, very gently, it took her hand, and placed it before the open end. She felt the stream of air. But why?

Bluecloak spoke, a rapid gabble she couldn’t follow. Then it slowed. A breathy whushing, a pause, then “in” and a talon tapped on the cylinder. Air in cylinder? Ofelia nodded, hoping that was right. “Yahtuh in…” a guttural squawk. Ofelia blinked. Water in… something. Air in the cylinder, water in the cylinder? In something like the cylinder? In a pipe, she would say… had that been their word for pipe? “Pipe,” Ofelia said. “Water in pipe.” Her breath came short; she could not believe the creature was making these connections.

Bluecloak tipped its head to one side. Was that their nod? It repeated the sequence: [Whoosh] “in” gesture to cylinder. “Yahtuh in kye… kye…” It must be trying to say pipe. Ofelia tried again. “Pipe.” “Kite.” It tapped the cylinder again, preventing another correction. “Yahtuh in kite… zzzz in cort.” It had the whole idea. Like air in a tube, like water in a pipe, electricity flowed through cords, cables, wires. Ofelia had known children who found that hard to grasp, who had insisted that electricity could not flow, because wires were not hollow. And this creature had figured it out with no more than a few glances at the appliances and cords, at the elementary sketches of the teaching programs. Ofelia felt cold all over. These were dangerous creatures; they had killed humans. And she was exposing them to human technology… at the rate this one was learning, it would not be long before they were building their own starships.

She could not stop them, either. Even before she had known they were there, they must have acquired enough information to be dangerous. By the time she realized they were learning too much, they had already learned it.

Her mind cycled through the reasoning, discussing with the old voice whether or not it was her fault. The old voice accused, as always; the new voice defended. The old voice frayed, audible at last as the separate strands that had formed it: her mother, her father, the primary teacher who had been incensed when she learned too fast, the secondary teacher who had been incensed when she turned down the scholarship;

Humberto, Barto… even Rosara.

The new voice… she thought the new voice sounded like herself, but younger. But how could she be sure? It insisted she was not to blame. It went on to point out how exciting this was, what an opportunity. Ofelia burst out laughing, and Bluecloak shied away. “Sorry,” Ofelia said, pulling her mouth back to its normal expression. Bluecloak could not know why she laughed; it might not know her laughter was laughter. Could she explain, even to herself, why she was laughing? Just that the internal argument seemed so silly, both the worry that she was responsible for endangering the whole human race, and the newer voice’s enthusiasm for learning about an alien race.