Anomaly

Kaidra pulled on the new over-tunic he’d grown from the soft, strong fibers of civilian-grade cloth bacterium. Growing clothes was one of the skills every man picked up during military service, along with cooking, housekeeping, gardening, and killing.

The deep blue stripes on the sleeves and around the neckline accented his pale skin, making the blue undertones more pronounced. It reflected in his eyes, making the light grey appear blue. His tar-black hair was tied back in a professional bun exposing his tall ear points. He’d cut it all off once but got tired of being labeled as “womanish.”

There were worse research assignments, Kaidra was certain, but he couldn’t figure out what they would be. Why did he get stuck with the smelly beasts? He had asked to be on the team that was uncovering what may well be the lost city of Ublar. The chance to explore the oldest known writing would have been….

Kaidra shook his head to clear it — hard enough to feel it in the points of his ears. The others his age were twelve years ahead of him in their career. He had a job, and he would do it. As a linguist, he would learn the language of the brutes. What good it would do was anyone’s guess, but they had nothing to offer modern civilization.

He’d followed in his great-grandmother’s footsteps. Her stories about decoding the language of honey bees in their dances had enticed him. That, and the shiny, gold plaque that marked her as a winner of the highest honor in the sciences. He told her he wanted to win one, and she said he might just be the first man to do so.

Times had changed since then. Men were allowed into the sciences and medicine, allowed to vote, and began to hold positions of power, including in government. The masculinist movement had taken decades to reach the place it was at, and it wasn’t over.

Still, the anti-masculinists’ biggest bogeyman hadn’t happened; no draft for women appeared. There were no more women in the modern military than there had been in his great-grandmother’s day. Kaidra, like all men, had been drafted to serve twelve years in the military. That meant he was still on the bottom of the pile and forced to take whatever he got. Besides that, there was still a chance his great-grandmother might be right about him being the first male to win a Bright Oak Commendation for Science.

Physicists were still puzzling over the anomaly. It opened their world to that of the crude creatures he was to study. Whether it was a wormhole to another galaxy, or a rift between universes was still up for debate. What wasn’t up for debate was the near-perfect match between their world and the other.

Twenty-four-hour days, 365.2422 days per year, and a matching latitude of the anomaly on the two worlds. The biggest difference was the climate. The other world was hotter with wilder weather. It was believed this was due to the pollution the beasts had poisoned their air with.

Kaidra took a deep breath and stepped through the anomaly. The heat hit him like a hammer. There were no trees here to shade the summer sun, and the strange black, synthetic surface the beasts had covered the ground with stored and radiated the heat in waves.

The beasts had grown a fence around the anomaly. Built, he reminded himself. They didn’t have the technology to grow even the simplest tools, much less infrastructure. There was some sort of structure inside the fence, but the walls were straight and the corners sharp.

Two of the beasts motioned him toward the structure. Kaidra knew from those that had come before him, that the things they had their hands on at their hips were weapons. He entered the structure and was met with a cool breeze. The air inside was far more comfortable than that outside.

He was greeted by one of the creatures. Based on the animalistic fur on its face, it was an adult male that wore its hair short, like a woman. The clothes it wore looked like nothing Kaidra could grow. The artificial furnishings together with the creature and the inorganic walls gave the whole thing an uncanny, off-kilter feel.

It took some miming, but they finally learned the other’s name. Kaidra struggled to say the creature’s name, “Jim,” but once he found the trick to making the first sound, he had it down pat. For the creature’s part, he had no trouble saying Kaidra’s name.

Jim wrote out both names and showed Kaidra the letters in a beginning reader that started with the alphabet. With a lot of miming and example, Jim showed Kaidra how to use a device that played sounds and showed images and text to go with them.

Along with the device, Jim gave Kaidra the beginning reader, and a huge book that was not grown and written but built. What it was built from was beyond his reasoning, but it felt like a sturdier wasp nest. Maybe from wood pulp?

Based on the way the text appeared in the book, it was likely a lexicon. Kaidra was holding a linguist’s dream. They may be barely civilized animals, but they had a rich, well-formed language.

Jim made two cups of something he called “tea” and offered one to Kaidra. He watched as Jim sipped at his and followed suit. It was slightly acidic, with an odd tang. Jim offered a white, glistening powder to mix in, but Kaidra wasn’t sure. Then, he offered something Kaidra recognized, honey.

After adding a generous dollop of honey and mixing it in, Kaidra found the hot drink pleasant. He still didn’t trust the beastly thing, and the beast’s mistrust was plain on his brute face. At least it was a male, though. Kaidra thought the creatures probably gave the job to a male since they felt it was as unimportant as his people did.

Jim let him keep the books and device, and Kaidra spent every waking moment burying himself in the language of the beasts. Daily visits that started with trying to find words for things around them, turned into broken conversation. Over the course of nearly two months, that turned into casual conversation.

Jim was gruff, as Kaidra expected of a beast, but not violent. This day, however, he was being curt, and waves of annoyance radiated from him.

Kaidra looked at him. “What is the wrong, Jim?”

“What’s wrong? The goddamn Army’s kicking me out of here.” Jim sighed. “I’m sorry, K, didn’t mean to take it out on you. The physicists are coming next week with some top-secret equipment to measure the anomaly — again.”

“This angry you?”

“Hell, yeah, it does. It means at least two weeks where we can’t see each other.”

“I did not know you happy when I here are,” Kaidra said.

“Heh. Guess I’m not all that friendly,” Jim said, “but I do enjoy your company.”

“But we males, must do female orders.” Kaidra sighed. “We am both here because we am male, yes?”

“We what?”

Kaidra explained, as best he could, about his culture. The more he explained, the more surprised Jim seemed. Surprise turned into agitation and then anger when Kaidra explained the twelve years mandatory service for all men, and the fact that all the officers and commanders were women.

“We have it the opposite here,” Jim said, “but women’s rights are far better than they were in the past.”

“You not forced here?” Kaidra asked.

“No,” Jim said, “not at all. I just wanted a chance to talk to a distant cousin, get to know them.”

“Cousin?”

“We ran DNA on the first few of your kind to cross the anomaly. We’re more closely related to you than to chimps and bonobos.” Jim pulled up an online entry on Kaidra’s people. “See here, they’ve named your species Homo tolkiensis after Tolkien, a writer, since you look exactly like the elves he wrote about.”

“But, how?”

“That’s what the physicists are coming here to figure out. At some point in the past, the anomaly was open, then it was closed, we guess around 1.4 million years ago, based on genetics.”

“No, how writer know about people?” Kaidra asked, pointing at himself.

“Oh, no one knows.” Jim shrugged. “My guess is that the anomaly opens up from time to time, and stories get passed down about whatever comes through, whether it’s elves or humans.”

“Make smart, I guess.” Kaidra poured tea for both of them.

“Makes sense,” Jim said. “What kind of stories do your people have about mythical creatures?”

“We have story hairy brute animals people. Take food, eat babies, kill many.” Kaidra looked down into his cup of tea. “You look like. But not like.”

“No, not like.” Jim sighed, then in Kaidra’s language said, “Sorry I am.”

Kaidra’s head popped up at the sound of his language coming from Jim. He switched to his native tongue and asked, “When did you learn that?”

Jim smiled and answered back in the same language. “Good listen I do.”

Borrowing a phrase from Jim, Kaidra raised his cup and said, “Goddamn right!”

“Goddamn right!”

They drank in silence for several long minutes before Kaidra set down his cup and looked at the almost man across the table from him. “This order bad.”

“Very much so. However,” Jim said, “is there anywhere in your world I can stay while the anomaly is off-limits? I’d very much like to see it.”

“True? Jim come to people world?”

“Yes.” Jim pointed to a bag behind himself. “I’m already packed, including plenty of tea. I promise I won’t eat any babies.”

“Yes. I grow you shirt,” Kaidra tugged at his tunic, “and we talk more lot.”

“I look forward to it, and to learning more about the people and your technology.” Jim smiled. “I’m a biologist, so I’m keenly interested in how you grow everything you need.”