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A Taste of Putkur
Mawgri Qampoq shed his body armor and then his sheath of bright orange clothing, exposing his sinewy chest and muscular abdomen, his yellow-green scaled skin glistening under the white light of the cleaning room. He winked one yellow eye at me, smirked, and said in Stuwkreen, “You seem so fragile to me. I’m surprised you can even walk across the room.”
I, Malcolm Talbot, gathered a robe around my smaller human frame (for a human I was neither small nor weak) and made this excuse, “The heavier gravity on Putkywz takes some time to adjust to.” We were both wearing automatic translator implants (ATIs) and so had no trouble understanding the Stuwkreen-English interchange despite the split-second delay between moving mouths and comprehension.
“You will be a great delight and amusement to the Putkurs. This will be their first encounter with a species from another solar system . . . another galaxy. They will be curious about you. They will want to lick you.”
“Thanks for warning me.”
“Oh, don’t worry. They have progressed enough that they no longer eat intelligent species. Licking is a way of getting to know you. You should lick them, too.”
“What do they taste like?”
“Not much different from me. I’m part Putkur.”
“Which part?”
“The scales, of course.”
I loved Mawgri as I had loved no other creature before. He was sophisticated, at ease on any planet, attractive, wealthy and connected. Besides, he had saved me from my marooned state. I was not the only one who adored him. My jealousy pricked me at every encounter that he had with another; I could sense the adoration that others had for him.
“These are tense times,” he said, changing the subject as if this new thought had been active in his conscious mind. “The balance of power between Saca and Radimeer is all that is keeping the peace. We have to walk carefully and keep all our senses open.”
“Yet, everyone seems to love you and trust you.”
“Only because I speak their language and have things that they want.”
“The nectar fruit of Fwalenvo? The golden herb slazza? The dimpletoads?” I said, naming some of his most popular imports.
“Especially the dimpletoads, fried in tubifat to a crisp brown and dipped in the butter scald of gwargs. A tasty treat and very nutritious.”
“Well, I can’t argue with that. Dimpletoads in gwarg butter was my mainstay for weeks.”
“Lucky for you that we are all carbon-based life forms. In other systems, you could not have lasted so long.”
“Who knew that terra-forming moon was your entrepôt?”
“And that I would be visiting soon to take inventory only to find a beautiful species eating my wares?”
“I am forever indebted.” I bowed in mock reverence.
He looked at me until I felt his love. “Let’s call it even. If you hadn‘t crashed on my warehouse moon Seq, I would never have known you, and the beings of Za would have continued to think they were alone in the universe.” He paused still gazing and then snapped back to the task at hand.
“Well, let’s get ready.” He clicked a remote and a wall opened revealing a closet inside which was a wardrobe of Putkur outfits. “We need semiformal.” He clicked again and one rack rolled out with semiformal wear: bodysuits and complementary togas made of smur, whose expensive silken threads are affordable only by the wealthy. He picked out a brown suit and a gold toga and tossed them to me. “Here this will match your golden hair, and it’s a bit small for me.”
For himself he picked out a dark blue suit and a turquoise toga.
“You’ll have to help me wrap the toga,” I said. “We haven’t worn such things in eons.”
“The Putkurs enjoy flamboyant displays. The powerbrokers of Saca wouldn’t respect a person if he didn’t look noble.” He said this as he draped the toga, so most of it hung down my back, but two corners were tied over my right shoulder.
To secure the toga at my right shoulder, he clipped on a brooch of silver and sapphire. For himself, he chose a brooch of gold, diamonds and rubies.
“And shoes?”
He clicked and a lower deck with footwear slid forward. He selected knee-high soft suede boots: mine were red; his, black.
He clicked again and the racks and levels drew back and the wall closed.
“Now weapons.”
“We need weapons?”
“No self-respecting Putkur goes out without his weapons—another important display.”
“Are you supplying these weapons?”
“Take your own: a blade sheathed and a handgun holstered. They will be another mark of distinction for you.”
“You’re showing me off?”
“Of course. You will be the center of attention while I do business.”
“I don’t know if I like this.”
“Listen. You may never be able to return to your home galaxy. No one there knows where you are. It would behoove you to learn about your new home: the Za System. Besides you might be—most probably will be—asked to speak in public, and you must present yourself as an authority from your world.”
He was right. I had no idea how I could get home or how I could contact humans who, for all I knew, were exploring light-years away. Our mother ship had run into a meteor storm, been thrashed and battered and shredded apart. I and others had managed to launch lifeboats into deep space at warp speed. I was wounded and had passed out for I don’t know how long. When I woke I was alone on board in the vast blackness of space, but the lifeboat was intact. Not knowing where I was, I drifted, slowly consuming the meager rations left on board and medicating my wounds. I had tried to radio others, but no human source had answered, although the lifeboat’s automatic emergency signal had continued to pulse into the reaches of space.
When I entered the Za System, although Za was dimmer than Sol, I thought that in the distance I saw Earth, but then I saw two others that could be earths: blue-green-brown planets with atmosphere, so I knew I was not home, but that maybe I had a chance to live. Here were three earths orbiting one sun. But the lifeboat had no power, so I drifted—past one planet, then another larger one, and finally toward a smaller, bluer one; but before the lifeboat reached that planet, a moon (Seq) came around and the lifeboat was drawn to it and skidded over its surface until crashing into a mound. Strapped into a safety pod, I survived, suited up and explored and found the warehouses of Za Mauxize, Mawgri’s trading company.
Fortunately, those warehouses stored edibles, so I carried containers back to a terra-forming bubble and lived there, eating dimpletoads in gwarg butter and nectar fruit and taloos (a red tuber) and tak (a grain bigger than Earth’s wheat, but smaller than Earth’s corn), making a mush with the water inside the bubble.
I had even eaten some slazza, but quickly found it less of a food than an herb. Too much gave me a stomach ache and caused hallucinations, but a little sprinkled on my meals made everything more delicious and made me feel blessed to be in a terra-forming bubble on a moon of Aasheen (the smallest, bluest planet) despite my solitary state and isolated situation.
I wondered about the world into which I had wandered and looked at the planets through my telescopic lenses. The smallest, bluest planet had only the one moon on which I lived. The largest, brownest planet had two large moons, one half the size of the other; the larger one farther out from the planet seemed to have an atmosphere of its own. The middle-sized, greenest planet had three moons, all much smaller than the moons of the largest planet. The three planets moved in close orbits, so during much of their orbital journeys, they were visible to one another with the naked eye.
I knew the inhabitants were advanced enough to fly in space; otherwise, how could these lunar storehouses exist? Eventually, I saw spaceships pass by—long, silver oblongs like shiny, expensive cigar holders—and hoped that one would land soon on what I had come to think of as “my” moon.
Then came Mawgri, my savior, who opened his worlds to me, took me into his arms and made me his fast, trusted companion: a believer, a second, an aide, a lover. “Don’t be afraid, beautiful creature,” were the first words he spoke to me. “Come with me into my worlds. You will be an amazement to its peoples, and by my side you will go everywhere and be adored by multitudes.”
He took me first to Putkwyz, to which he was going to deliver foods, herbs and technology that he had gathered from the two other planets. A fleet of fifty silver ships awaited his beck and call. While his crew loaded supplies onto the cargo ship, he took me to see the ship medic, who—surprised and anxious to encounter an alien living on the moon—checked me over and pronounced me healthy except for needing certain inoculations; the ship was clean and well-ordered. Its drive was a mystery to me: it hovered and moved gracefully from one planet to another as if its energy was derived from the planets themselves, one pushing, and the other pulling.
Putkwyz has a variety of climates as any planet would. Around the equator is a belt of warm, dark green (almost black) productivity where farmers produce tak and rul (a protein-rich nut) and ten-meter-high stalks of the purple wyrd plant that looks like a cross between an asparagus and cauliflower although its flower is pink and two-meters around. Set off from the dark sward, or in it, are towns whose denizens farm the crops that are sold to the rest of the planet.
Beyond the dark, fertile belt are basins of desert where succulents grow and hold the thin rain that falls twice a year. On those open dirt and brush plains run smagos, thin piggish creatures that are a favorite food of Putkurs, and large flightless birds, called aubligados, which have beautiful, multicolored feathers much prized on Putkwyz. The basins hold canyons and caves from which the Putkurs mine varied ores while the surface is dotted with derricks drilling into the earth for oil.
Then come mountains rising above the dirt plains. In the lower valleys graze herds of domesticated animals: gwargs that give meat and milk and leather, kepocs that give wool, milk and meat, and arbezes that the Putkur nomads had traditionally used as beasts of burden carrying themselves and their supplies rushing into the rest of the planet to set up their tribal kingdoms. Above the herding valleys are plateaus of fruit orchards and tuber farms. On these plateaus are also the greatest cities of Putkwyz, stepped in terraces up the sides of mountains.
Someone from earth upon first seeing a Putkur would think lizard, but that is not quite true. Putkurs are warm-blooded creatures as they would have to be since their planet is the farthest from the sun, and thus is the coolest of the three planets. Even their darkly verdant equatorial region would be considered merely warm by earthlings. Their deserts are dry but cool by day, cold by night. Their mountains, cool during summer, frigid in winter. Their eyesight is very sharp since they receive the least light from the sun. Although descended from egg-bearing creatures, their women now give live birth to babies surrounded by a fragile sac whose membrane, though thicker than a human placenta, is soon broken, so the infants can begin nursing immediately from their mothers’ mouths. The women have no breasts, but chew and digest food which they can regurgitate in a lumpy hash for the babies; this nurturing recast is rich in protein and minerals and vitamins and strengthens the young immune systems.
The children grow rapidly and by fifteen earth years are able to take their places in the warrior battle lines. However, this is changing because of the advent of the Stuwkreen, who of the three planet civilizations have the most advanced technology, the most developed economy, the most sophisticated cultural mix, which they had been sharing with the Putkurs in order to bring them along to enjoy the benefits of peaceful co-existence. All the new knowledge demanded more literate masses, more technologically astute leaders and engineers. So, more and more the young had to put off the warrior status and stay in school, learning as much as they could.
Putkwyz is rich in mineral wealth and fossil fuels. By the time of the advent of the Stuwkreen, the Putkur scientists had already discovered electricity and invented steam and internal-combustion and jet and rocket engines. Monopolies to develop autonomous wheeled vehicles and winged vehicles and hulled vehicles had developed in each polity. The industrial development on certain continents was roughly equivalent to mid-Twentieth Century Earth; they had built factories and had a mass of bondage workers to fill them.
Sadly, their social development was somewhat less. Most habitable areas of Putkur land were ruled by either tribal authorities, or emperors and kings who had amalgamated many tribes into a kingdom or an empire. Only on one continent Kunwyz had democracy recently developed, aided by Stuwkreen influence, so the one democracy was fresh, fragile, and feverish to share its new freedoms. This new freedom-loving state frightened the traditional rulers, especially since the revolutionaries had killed the wannabe king and coerced the nobility into exile or equality.
Of all the polities on Putkwyz, the most powerful was the Saca Empire of the Five Continents. Imagine a large, rough, ridged pentagon with isthmuses ranging in four directions with at the end of each narrow stretch of land a different shape: north, a swollen eggplant; northwest, a ragged rectangle; south a green-belted continent like a scalloped shell; east, a fan-shaped mountainous mass with fingers in the ocean. The central landmass surrounded by volcanic mountains, Saca is the largest, but all are large. All five together take up twenty percent of the land of the planet.
In Saca all citizens are considered slaves of the state and the state is Sacacon the emperor, who resides in Sacawyz. He is an enlightened despot, whom I was soon to meet.
However, this night was meant for Mawgri’s business, and I followed him out into the cool black Putkwyz night. Waiting for us outside our gate was a yellow gasoline car with a Putkur driver, who bowed and opened the rear doors for us to climb in and then shut them behind us.
Mawgri introduced the driver as he sat in the driver’s seat. “Luvark is an educated worker, one of the first; he has been especially assigned to us as our driver by the Sacacon himself.”
Then to Luvark he said, “This is Za Malcolm, a visitor from another system, another galaxy. He is dear to me and to the Sacacon.”
Luvark then looked directly at me as if noticing me for the first time and bowed. I nodded.
End of Chapter 1
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