In July of 2169 our silvery saucers made landfall on H'shbri, an
impoverished desert planet about the size of Earth. My experience with
dispensing medicine in poorer regions back home earned me free passage,
which I gladly accepted, as I couldn't otherwise afford to vacation
off-world.
The overarching purpose of the mission was to defeat the tyrannical
government of the grays, a short, sexless people with large black eyes.
That government had already been deposed by the time I arrived with the
second wave, but pockets of resistance remained, or so I was told. The
war for liberation quickly became a mop up operation against hostiles who
were able to blend into the general population.
I shared a tent at the dispensary compound with a local called N'mene, a
name I could hardly pronounce. My companion gray was fluent in English
and would translate for me.
"My people are grateful for your medical aid," N'mene told me the first
day. "It is good you are here."
That night the local free market, set up with the help of military
specialists from Earth, was ransacked by an angry mob. Incredibly,
foodstuffs were burned and dumped onto the sand by chronically underfed
grays. Two humans were critically injured and had to be life-flighted off
of the planet.
"Why did they do that?" I asked N'mene the next day. "It's senseless."
"Some of the materials there," said my alien coworker. "Were offensive to
the way of H'sh."
"Your leader," I said. "The one we exiled to spare you from torture and
genocide, was also a believer in H'sh, right?"
"It is so." N'mene assented.
I wanted to say more, but the asexual parent of a gray child brought its
offspring to our tent for treatment just then. The care and tenderness
the adult showed for the little one astonished me. I'd been told that the
grays had descended into a brutal and barbaric lifestyle. Stories of
locals devouring their offspring were passed around Army campfires with
bottles of imported whiskey. The grays did not consume or produce
alcohol.
"Fever," I said , having measured the child's temperature with a digital
thermometer. I gave the parent a bottle of children's aspirin and
recommended bed rest. The two left with a nodding of heads.
"It is good you are here," said N'mene.
Two weeks later a couple of grays walked up to a group of our soldiers
and blew themselves up with homemade explosives. Five humans were killed
in the attack, which occurred in a small town just fifteen kilometers
from my camp. That village had been the first to receive a fuel cell
generator for electricity.
"I don't get it," I said to N'mene. "You used to have engineering,
mathematics and even space travel. What happened to you people?"
"It is the way of H'sh," said N'mene. "It is forbidden to live
deliciously."
"But that's a primitive superstition," I said.
It was the first time I had seen an emotional expression on the face of a
gray. N'mene's small lipless mouth curled in a display of anger. "Your
statement offends me. It is not honorable to ridicule the beliefs of
another."
In August I ventured out to the market place hoping to catch some local
flavor. I didn't tell N'mene as I wanted to go alone. Though most of the
buildings on H'shbri were made of stone, the market stalls had been
constructed from the brittle lumber of oasis trees.
I was looking at some dried fruits that resembled dates when a gang of
juvenile grays surrounded me. They began to taunt me in their halting
tongue, and they shoved me, pushing me toward an alley. Their aggression
alarmed me, and I feared for my life.
"Stop," someone called out behind me, and I turned to find N'mene
standing in the alley.
The youths deferred to their elder and dispersed, melting into the idle
groups of grays clustered around the stalls. N'mene told me that it had
seemed prudent to tail me, just in case.
"It is good you are here," I said.
N'mene chuckled with the throaty clucking that is the gray equivalent of
laughter, and for a moment I thought that everything was changing for the
better.
But the terrorist attacks against humans continued throughout the summer.
Eventually the people back home tired of sending troops and resources to
a distant planet with an indecipherable culture. A worldwide web vote was
held, and the majority favored ending the occupation, so the ships were
called home.
I saw N'mene a few hours before I boarded my saucer. We talked about the
provisional government the army had set up for H'shbri. The new leader, a
gray named A'nin, had a colorful nickname: Butcher of the Dunes, I think
it was.
"I'm sorry we have to leave you like this," I said.
"Do not sorrow for us," said N'mene. "We are not well met with pity."
As our star craft lifted away from H'shbri, I watched the planet shrink
until it was like a grain of sand in the velvet black of space. Behind me
two soldiers exchanged cell calling numbers in low, intimate
conversation. In one hard summer they had formed a bond that would never
be forgotten, no matter the time or distance that fell between them.
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