CHAPTER 39

The number of people that Patty could remember talking too, in her professional capacity, and actually enjoyed it were so limited that she could count them on the fingers of one hand. When people knew that you were going to take what they said and then plaster it all over the world, for everyone to hear, they tended to get a little nervous. The ones that did not, were usually media professionals themselves and, nine times out of ten, they were just playing you. That became a competition of sorts and came with it’s own pitfalls. Patty was never sure which kind she hated worse.

Curwin was an entirely different sort, the one you rarely ever meet. From the first moment that Patty had met the guy, he made no secret that he wanted to tell his story the way he wanted it heard. At first Patty had thought that meant she was dealing with a slicked out salesman, the ones that wanted to play games. Curwin did not do that. He wanted her to know that he had good reasons for what he did and was more than willing to share those reasons. Patty was somewhat thankful for that because, as she had very well found out, the guy was a lot smarter than she was. He would have tromped her in a second flat.

This alien human, had to be one of the wisest men that Patty had ever had the pleasure of talking too. Unlike so many others in Feyland, Curwin had not let it go to his head. He never acted arrogant about knowing or realizing things that you did not. He was patient and, sort of like a teacher, in that he would never shrink away for explaining something. He would also make sure that you knew, absolutely, that he thought no less of you for it.

They strolled around the army’s firebase and it was clear that Curwin was doing as much observing as he was chatting. He had never really discussed any military topics with Patty. So far they had talked mostly about the human culture in Feyland. Patty had been quite surprised by it. Not only did they have their own unique and distinct ways but, it was quite clear to her that they had also adopted any number of things from Earth. Again, it was a paradox because, it appeared as if they had been doing it for a very long time. They certainly knew more about Patty, and her world, than she did about theirs.

That included Curwin’s obvious eye for the tactical. Patty put it to him and when he answered she replied, “I thought I recognized that spark. I just never took you for the military sort.”

Curwin easily shrugged it off, “well, in the way you’re thinking, I’m not really. With my people, Miss Walsh, there are no civilians. If we are called, we all have to fight, every man, woman, and child.”

Patty looked around the firebase and realized that the people she was seeing in uniform looked much like children to her eyes. Still, Patty knew they were adults and she could rationalize the need for youth. War was most definitely a young man’s game except, apparently, Curwin did not seem to think so. He explained, “there’s not enough of us to do anything else. That’s the part I hope you take with you Patty. The human race is on the verge of extinction here. We’re not as long lived as the elves. We can’t reproduce as fast the Gnomes.”

Patty noted that he left one primate group out, “what about the Yangani?”

Curwin gave a quiet laugh and replied, “they’re in the same boat we are, only, they don’t like us too much ether.”

“I’ve noticed that Curwin,” Patty said with a hint of regret, “I kind of get the feeling that none of the different species here like each other. Has it always been like that?”

“Probably,” was the only answer that he gave. Then he used it to point out something he had said over and over again, “that’s a subject that shows your worlds naïve mindset. Species never get along Miss Walsh. They might find mutual advantage, like we do with the other primates, or they’re always trying to kill each other over limited resources. That’s how nature works and we’re just as bound by it’s laws as any species.”

Patty was not sure she was ready to believe that. She knew a lot of people back home that were always looking for an escape. Some of them got quite extreme about it too. Still, Patty never blamed them, no matter which poison their particular escape was, be it UFOs, religion, video games, sports, or whatever. The belief that some perfect place existed, somewhere else, seemed to be a very human trait. Now she was standing in such a place and it was not only more of the same old same old, it was worse!

Again, Curwin laughed only this time at Patty. It was a friendly, almost fatherly sort of humor but, a laugh none the less. He explained it too, “I know you don’t believe me. Actually, that’s one of the things I like about Earth, your people, you Americans especially.” That had to be the first time Patty had heard a foreigner pay her country a compliment. She just had to hear why and Curwin, again, was happy to explain, “you’re all optimists. Even after you’ve seen all of this with your own eyes and still, you want to hold on to hope. You want to think there’s a way we can all live together.”

“That’s just it Curwin,” Patty was ready to argue this point, “you have orcs that live in Feyland, along with several other species that lay eggs. You’ve obviously figured out how to make it work with them. Why can’t you do it with the Polmarij.”

Why was it that this man had a bag full of ways to make you feel like you knew nothing at all? Curwin politely explained, “again, that’s a lack of understanding about what’s really going on here. Take the Polmarij, for example. That’s not really a name Miss Walsh. That’s a word from my language.”

Patty shrugged, “I’ve never heard it.”

“That’s because it fell into disuse. It’s from an older period of time and, after they started calling the Orcs that, people just no longer wanted to keep using it for anything else,” Curwin said.

“Ok,” Patty thoughtfully nodded, “what did it mean?”

Curwin actually had to think about it but, in the end, he said, “untamed maybe? Feral? Raised by bad parents. It doesn’t translate well, even into our modern language.”

Now it was Patty’s turn to do some thinking. She kept trying to figure out the implications of this and, nothing worked in her mind until she turned it around, “so you’re saying the Orcs that live here are, domesticated?”

Curwin was unhappy with that term but, mostly because he seemed to think it did not fit, “that would be an overstatement. As you might have noticed, the Orcs that live here have their own culture that’s quite different from that of the Polmarij.”
“Um,” Patty nodded in total agreement, “yeah, for one thing they aren’t trying to kill me.”

Curwin found that humorous but, he went on anyway, “it all goes back to the differences in biology. You people haven’t figured out how important that is yet. When Orcs hatch they imprint on the first creature they meet. As you may have learned, from the military reports they gave you, Orcs don’t have genders, so, no mothers or fathers. It’s creates a totally different social structure from what we’re used too.”

Patty thought she might see where this was going so she jumped on it, “so if they’re raised by a human, they’ll act like one?”

“No,” it seemed as if Curwin was at a loss for words. Patty was sure this was a rare thing, “they grow up to be as much an individual as any primate. Their attitudes are somewhat different though. I wouldn’t call them domesticated as much as I would say, maybe, they just don’t seem to pick up the blood lust the Polmarij seem to have. When the ones here in Feyland reach adulthood, in about six or seven of your years, then logic takes over. Why should they destroy what’s as much their support structure as ours? That’s easiest way I know how to explain it.”

Patty smiled, “Curwin, it still boils down to common ground. Anyway you put it.”

“Maybe it does,” Curwin nodded, “ideally, maybe there is something there. The practicality of implementing it is an entirely different matter.”

That got Patty to thinking about that very thing. From where she stood, the key to it was in the Orcs that already lived here. That led to the question, “so how did the, um, non Polmarij? How did they get here in the first place?”

Curwin found what looked like a rock, and was really a wood splinter. He sat down on it and showed his age as he did. He was limping a little and most definitely tired but he still answered, “I don’t really know for sure. I doubt anyone does.”

Patty joined him on the splinter and then asked, “I don’t understand. You said that even your people have records that go back thousands of years. How could you not know? Surely, at the least you guys have legends and stories, right?”

“We have some of the records Miss Walsh,” Curwin admitted, “and a lot of my job is making sure we keep them. Course the way you say thousands of years it is clear that you think this a long time. For us, it’s not, it’s just a drop in the bucket, as you Americans like to say.”

Again, he could tell she did not quite believe him and, yet again, Curwin thought it was humorous. He tried to explain even if he thought it would do no good, “our empire ruled these lands,” Curwin waived a hand at the trees, “for thousands of years.”

“And that was thousands of years ago,” Patty replied. “You told me a little about the, what did you call it? The Iwerdden Am… Sorry what was it again?”

He laughed, “it’s ok. You’re referring to the Iwerdd Amlodia. Not really a name per se, kind of like Feyland which, of course, is your description of the Elf realm. That’s not what they call it as you might have guessed. What they have in common is that they’re both more descriptions than names. We called our world and our nation, Dynolis. The Iwerdd period was more like, the peak of our nation. It was when we were running these lands.”

That led to a very obvious question, “so what happened?”

Curwin just shrugged, “things come and go Miss Walsh. I don’t think any one thing led directly to our downfall. It happened over a very long period of time. What I am just hoping is that it isn’t nature telling us that we’re destined for extinction. That’s my greatest fear right now.”

Patty nodded in agreement, “so that’s why you want our help.”

“No Patty,” Curwin replied, “it’s more like the other way around. There may be a lot of you now, on Earth that is, only if nature has selected us for extinction, all of us, it’s because there’s another form of life that can survive better than us. Not your military, not the Dell, nothing is going to stop us from dying out completely.”

Patty felt a twinge in her stomach. She really didn’t believe what he was saying but, just the fact that he believed it was disturbing. She was quite subdued when she asked him, “if you really believe that then what’s the point to anything?”

“You have to remember something,” Curwin told her, “we are a very young species, Miss Walsh. We probably branched off from the elves, oh, only a few million years ago, maybe? Nobody really knows for sure but, just because we’ve failed in one place doesn’t mean we won’t flourish in another. Migrations are one way a species survives. Also, just because we’re down now doesn’t mean we won’t find a way to get back up. We have to try, that’s also a part of survivability.”

“OK,” Patty tossed that around in her mind as she bobbed her head. Then she asked another logical question, “I guess we proved that we can thrive on Earth. That leads me to ask an important question here. Why didn’t your people migrate there?”

Curwin looked a little confused. Patty was pretty sure that was a rare thing. He looked at her funny and then asked, “what do you mean?”

“Well,” Patty just shrugged, “you guys say you’ve know about the dell for ages beyond, well, a time well beyond my comprehension at least. Why didn’t you just migrate to Earth?”

Curwin acted as if he did not know how to answer that question and, as Patty found out, it was more because of information that he took so much for granted that he could never have believed no one would know it, “we did.”

Patty blinked, “what?” She blinked again and by the time she got the retarded look off of her face she fanned her hands and said, “no, we would have noticed that, I’m sure. I mean, I know the elves say they’ve been there before and, I have to admit, there’s now some proof of that but, long term settlement? I think it would have showed up in the history books, even the crappy ones we have in America.”

Again, Curwin went back into explaining mode, “you take Dell travel for granted. Something I noticed from my time in England, you Americans pretty much expect to snap your fingers and things just happen. Not in the real world Miss Walsh or, at least, not in mine. They couldn’t always open the Dell like they can now. The funny part to that story is, humans are the ones who figured out how and nothing pisses the elves off more than that. They’d been trying to figure it out for millennia and, then, they just finally gave up.”

“I’ve heard the story,” Patty quietly injected.

Curwin went on, “before that time, you were kind of at the mercy of the elements. Nobody knew when the thing would open, for how long, or how big.”

“Yeah,” Again Patty nodded her head, “I saw those interviews before I came here. That Ian Dominique guy was explaining it. He said that normally it’s about the size of a pin head almost.”

“That I don’t know,” Curwin replied, “I don’t know who Ian Dominique is ether but, not the point. The point is that when our people sent groups over, they had to be self sufficient. They didn’t know when they’d get cut off. Over time, the ones that survived, managed to eek out a descent living and finally formed a stable community. It’s what our ancestors were kind of hoping for but, they went their way and we went ours.”

This news was either the most incredible thing that Patty had ever heard or it was total crap. She was betting on the latter. If Curwin was right then he was claiming that his people were the forefathers of all human civilization on Earth! She was starting to think she had guessed wrong about the arrogance thing with him. Still, she did not say that. She just asked him for clarification in a way that did not sound like it, “so, your people came over tens of thousands of years ago and went on to build the great pyramids, that’s what you’re saying?”

Again he looked confused, “what?”

Now it was Patty who had to clarify, “your colonists. The ones you said came through the Dell. They founded our civilization, is that what you’re saying?”

“No,” he looked at her like she was crazy, “there were already humans there. If the records are right, in the beginning, there were also a few other species too. Course over time, it seems that those species got eliminated in one way or the other. As for our colonists, eventually, their biggest threat came from other humans. How ironic is that? The last time the Dell opened for them, the damn elves had to help out. We weren’t strong enough to do anything by that point.”

Patty felt her stomach turn along with her peaked curiosity. She picked her words very carefully this time, “Curwin, how long ago was that? You know, when the elves helped out your colony?”

He had to think on it a minute, “oh, I don’t know. If I’m getting the time conversions right, maybe, two thousand years ago? I could be wrong but, I’m pretty sure that it’s somewhere in that neighborhood.”

Now Patty was having to remember her own history. What was going on, back on Earth, around that time period. She began mumbling, “ok so that’s not the pyramid people. I think Stone Henge is older than that. That’s… um, the Roman Empire?”
Curwin nodded in approval as if he had just remembered, “I think. I would have to go look it up. Something about an invasion of what’s now Britain. It was a human empire, maybe Roman. Like I said, there’s a long history there and, well, like I said, I’d have to go look it up.”

Patty suddenly realized something. They were not just talking ancient history here and, in fact, Curwin acted as if two thousand years ago was just yesterday. He was, indeed, looking at history from a much larger perspective than Patty could even imagine! That was the grand irony of it as well. This information was not just ancient history. It was currently relevant as hell because, nothing about the dates he was giving matched with anything she had heard so far. What did it mean though? What had happened to their colony? Patty now found herself very eager to get back, even though she knew that she was had more work to do up here.

The fact remained, Patty could not wait to see these records that Curwin had talked so much about, even if she could not read them. Surely someone could! Patty lightly touched Curwin’s arm and told him, “and look it up we shall.”