Battle for Zarmina by John Simion

Author:John Simion [Simion, John]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: John Simion
Published: 2018-12-02T22:00:00+00:00

THE GREAT ZARMINA TRADING CO.

To my surprise, Aaron started the conversation. “That was in-ter-es-ting period. Ants like humans period. Ants are friends with humans period. Humans are friends with Ants comma too period.”

“Yes, that was certainly … um … interesting,” I agreed. “And we are glad for the friendly meeting.”

Aaron raised its left arm, signifying agreement, so I went on. “We are ready to trade with the Ants. We have much to offer one another, but there is something important to discuss first. That is a matter of trust.”

“What means trust questionmark,” asked Aaron.

“Trust means we can depend on the Ants to do what they say,” I said. “We agreed to release you and to meet and trade with the Ants if the Ants brought back Adeline DuBois. You agreed to that.”

“Yes period,” said Aaron. “Ants keep promise period.”

“Then where is Adeline DuBois?”

“Ants already return human girl to home period. Is this problem questionmark,” asked Aaron.

“No, that’s not a problem,” I said, but I wasn’t going to just take Aaron’s word. I turned to Landon. “Go check it out.” Landon nodded and headed out the door. “We want the family of the human girl to tell us she is okay,” I said to Aaron. “In the meantime, let’s talk about what each of us offers to trade.”

Aaron turned to Calvin and chittered something. Calvin hopped down from the table and sidled over to his spoker. For the first time, I noticed that Calvin’s spoker was slightly different from that of the others; it was wider, apparently because it had the alien equivalent of saddlebags, leathery looking pouches hanging from each side. Calvin touched something and the saddlebag slid open. With both the door and the saddlebag open on one side, you’d think the spoker would fall over. But it didn’t. There had to be a strong gyroscope or something inside, but nothing about the spokers surprises me anymore. Calvin removed something from the first pouch, then repeated the process on the other saddlebag. It handed the items up to Aaron, then climbed back up to the table. Aaron placed the items on the table in front of us for review, saying only, “Ant tools period.”

There were two items. Each was tiny, which shouldn’t have been any surprise given the size of their creators and the tiny pouches from which they’d come. The first and biggest was a cylinder about 25 cm long with a diameter of about 5 or 6 cm. The color of burnished titanium, it bore three small extensions - really just bumps — which I took to be handles. There were no obvious controls other than tiny indentations near the handles, similar to the tiny indentations that Zig had manipulated to open Aaron’s spoker. That was no surprise; it seemed that all Ant controls were similar indentations operated by the tiny spike or pin on the backs of their hands. The second item was also a cylinder, a little thicker than the first object but with a larger globelike orb at one end, perhaps 8-10 cm in diameter.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.