Chapter 4

The crew's training program was not that demanding, and there was plenty of time. They learned basic weapons use, a little spaceflight simulation, and a great deal of language. The crew was given brain-boosting food supplements to learn faster. Sergei's IQ and brain-cell count increased rapidly. In only a few days, the eight humanoids could hold a crude conversation. Sign language, pictures, words, and voiced sound effects filled the domed city. English and Russian mixed with tongues both simpler and more complex.

The main topic of coversation was escape. Everybody voiced their hopes of learning enough to seize control of the 2-2-2 technology and flee to their homeworlds. That is, everyone except the humanoid Sergei called Afro.

Afro never spoke.

One day, sitting in a spaceflight simulator cabin, Sergei and Tripod were divebombing an alien landscape at supersonic speed. Sergei played the simulation with only half his attention.

"Everyone here speaks but Afro," he said, as if talking to himself - which he often did. "Can he speak, Tripod?"

Tripod grunted, and said in a low voice: "Sergei, I try tell you then and try tell you now. Understand me this now. Afro... is not he. Is... she."

Sergei made a nod of insight.

"Ahaa... you could smell it, yes?"

"Yes. Easy, smell he or she. Is your nose sick?"

"What...? Uh... no, my nose is not sick."

"But you can not smell Afro is she?"

"I... I had a cold."

"What is 'a cold?'"

"A joke."

"You funny, Sergei."

"Yeah... it helps. So... can Afro speak?"

"In sound?" Sergei nodded. "I think... no. Her colors can speak, a little. I have little knowledge of her. When you watch 2-2-2 speak to the crew, do you see what 2-2-2 says to Afro?"

"Her screen... I remember seeing her screen is always blank. Just a bright light. Only text on her screen is... the word '2-2-2.' But... Afro watches the light for a long time."

"Yes." Tripod paused to drop a nuclear warhead on a simulated city. The simulator's viewscreen went white; the city turned into a giant mushroom cloud. "Yes! The light on Afro's screen is how 2-2-2 speaks to her. The light is there, then not there... very fast. Fast so we cannot see it..."

"But Afro's eyes are fast enough. So she's not blind then? She could learn to read what we write?"

"I think... if Afro wants to. Is that important? You need a female so much? You want to try her, yes?"

Sergei rolled his eyes, threw up his hands - and on the viewscreen, an enemy missile hit their simulated ship. The simulation ended with a loud crash over the sound system.

The 2-2-2's emotionless voice said in Russian and Yyynian: "Try again. Try harder."

The seats sent small punitive electric shocks through Sergei's and Tripod's legs. Tripod snarled, rattling his three legs; the blue pelt on his back stood out like a bristle, and he squinted in pain.

"Okay, okay!" Sergei hissed, rubbing his sore legs. "Start the bloody program again." He produced his electronic notepad and quickly scribbled down a message for Tripod to read: Afro made short work of Hairball. Fast work. We will need her quick work one day... to do the BIG work. Pa?

Tripod did not smile, but he had a manner of showing agreement.

"Paaa..." he reached out and scribbled on Sergei's pad with his three-fingered hand: We have very much time to think on the BIG work.

"I'll go talk to her. In colors."

One machine became especially popular among the crew members. It was dubbed the "Loka," or "memory extractor." Sergei spent hours every day-cycle connecting his brain to the Loka. Memories of his past life, half-remembered music, even his early childhood, were extracted, projected and recorded in 3-D.

In the artificial evenings of his private quarters, after a day-cycle of training, he sat outside his cottage and listened to extraced music of old Russian artists, long since dead: Alla Pugatjova, Vysotskij, Abba... those two girls who pretended to be lesbians, whose names he'd forgotten.

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GALACTIC GANGSTA(c)A.R.Yngve 2003, 2004. All rights reserved. May not be copied without permission.

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