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Barmeth reveals himself to Nennef

As they crested the hill, Nennef was astounded at what he saw. Nestled inconspicuously among the rolling Nenmaran hills was a spacecraft. It was marked in red with the Lazy L pattern, the same design he had seen in the cosmic storm so many years ago. Nennef saw there was very little daylight left. He was concerned about having to walk back in the dark.

The door to the spacecraft opened and an alien man with dark weathered skin stepped out to meet them. The man wore a type of jumper, which reminded Nennef of the flight suits he had seen military pilots on Earth wear. It was deep green in color. Nothing on Nenmar was that green, not even the sliffut leaves. The alien man quickly glanced at the three men of Nenmar. His eyes locked onto Nennef for an imperceptible moment longer than the other two; he seemed to Nennef to be making some mental note, perhaps about
how different Nennef looked from the other men.

"Greetings to you, my friends," the man said cheerfully. He spoke in flawless natural Nenmaran. "It’s good to see you again," he added, speaking to Merrin.

None of the men of Nenmar said anything, but Merrin stepped forward and smiled as the space man nodded his head to him. The alien man took out a small box from a pocket on his jumper and handed it to Merrin.

"Here, I want you to have this," he said. "I will leave it to you to figure out exactly what it is," he added with a natural Nenmaran chuckle. He seemed to enjoy Merrin’s childlike wonder as he watched him turn the box first one-way and then another.

Gathering his courage, Nennef stepped up to beside Merrin so as to examine the box himself. It had small electronic receptacles on two sides, those on one side having one single opening and those on the other side with numerous smaller openings in straight rows.
On what apparently was the bottom of the box was a label that had Earth markings on it! There were Arabic numerals and words that
appeared to Nennef to be written in either German or Swedish.

Glancing up, Nennef noticed the alien man watching his reaction; he realized that native Nenmarans would have no idea of Earth things and would react to them exactly as Merrin was. Nennef was certain that the alien man did not miss his look of recognition about the box. He stepped back away from beside Merrin, now somewhat apprehensive about what the alien man might do with this new knowledge about him.

"My dear friends," the alien man said. "I must get ready to leave now. Is there anything you wish to tell me before we part?"

"When will our next meeting be?" Merrin asked.

"I’m not sure this time, my friend," the alien man replied. "I have some other business I must attend to. Let’s leave it open for now."

"I wish we could see you again soon, good friend," Merrin pleaded.

"Perhaps another time," the alien man said. He smiled and nodded, and turned to go back into his spacecraft. He waved good-bye to them from the door that also served as a ramp into the spaceship. The door then closed behind him and sealed shut.

"There’s no use in staying here any longer," Mallar suggested.

Nennef and Merrin nodded their heads in agreement. They all began a hasty walk, which turned into an urgent jog.

"Let’s get back to the company loft and experiment with this new box," Mallar blurted out.

"I’m with you, my friend," Merrin agreed. "Come on, let’s hurry!"

At first Nennef tried to keep up, but the rapidly fading daylight left him to trip and stumble as he fell further behind of the other two. Finally, Nennef gave up trying and began just walking as carefully as he could. Hoping he could find his way home before total darkness, he pressed ahead at a steady deliberate pace.

"¡Hola, Senior!" a voice called from behind him. "¿Puedo hablar con Usted?," the voice said, as Nennef turned to see the man from the Lazy L spaceship. This time the spaceship man had a small light attached to his shoulder, which shone to the ground with enough light for a person to walk.

Nennef knew the words the man spoke were not Nenmaran. They were not English either, but they somehow sounded like Earth. Nennef had been on Nenmar for so long, he remembered his own native tongue only because his daughter was actively interested in writing and speaking it with him.

Gradually, after a long moment, Nennef came to recognize that the other alien man, who was neither Nenmaran nor human, was speaking the Earth language Spanish. He spoke it very confidently, just as he had spoken natural Nenmaran with the three of them earlier. Although Nennef recognized the language, he had never learned to speak it fluently, and "Senior" was about all he could understand from what he was hearing now.

"Bonjour, Monsieur. Comprendez vous?" The alien man spoke again.

Nennef recognized that it was French this time, but held out his hands, palms up, and wagged his head to gesture he could not speak that language either.

The alien man tried again: "Good evening, sir," he began. "I would like to talk with you if you have a moment."

"I don’t have much of a moment," Nennef replied in English."It’s too dark for me to see my way back to the city already. I have one question though: Why are you trying to talk with me in all these Earth languages, when you and I both know from the meeting we just had that we both speak Nenmaran?"

"Let me share my logic with you," the man continued in English."There is only one way you could be this fluent in an Earth language and be living here on Nenmar, since humans have no interstellar space flight capability. You must be the human who was carried here by the winds."

"How do you know how I came to be here?" Nennef challenged."There was a spaceship like yours in the cosmic storm while I was trapped in it; was that you?"

"Yes it was," the man confirmed. "We followed you here, and have been searching for you ever since. We thought you were living in one of the more populated areas, and we were hoping to draw you here with the gadgets we had collected from various refuse collections on our occasional visits to Earth. We’re very discreet there of course, and we never make contact with humans on Earth; they’re not ready to know we exist."

...

Jenna saw Nennef nodding his head to the strange man before him, as she came up to them from her hiding place."Can we switch to speaking Nenmaran, now that you’ve proven your point of who I am?" Nennef asked, still speaking in English."This Nenmaran woman is my wife, and I don’t want to talk around her with her standing right next to us."

"I little English speak," Jenna retorted in English. "I know words you say some."

"You do very well with the Earth language, dear lady," the alien man replied, reverting to natural Nenmaran. "It’s so different from your own native Nenmaran. It can only prove that you are very close to your husband to have learned his different language as well as you have."

"I’ve been listening to you, as Nenmarans listen," Jenna said. "Do you have something to tell us? And I don’t think you’ve told us your name."

"You do like to get straight to business, just like a native Nenmaran," the man said. "My name is Barmeth. I’m from the planet Gatton that is over toward the edge of the galaxy. I would like you both to come aboard our ship and meet my wife Kaggla. She’s a biological scientist and has been doing some amazing experiments with those wild carnivorous creatures which live down there in the lowlands."

"I hate pellims!" Jenna blurted with an angry squint. "Why does she even go near them, much less touch them?" Turning to Nennef she said: "Pull up your shirt, my love, and show Barmeth what a pellim did to you."

"It’s probably too dark for him to see," Nennef replied. "It doesn’t seem people from Gatton have Nenmaran eyes."

"You are correct on that, my friend," Barmeth affirmed. "Come, now. Let’s make our way over to our spaceship, where there is light inside."

"You won’t leave Nenmar with us in it, will you?" Jenna asked.

"Not at all, my dear lady," Barmeth assured her. "Just you come with me. I do have something to tell you, and I don’t want any sleuths around to hear it."

"You have the master sleuth with you now," Nennef chuckled."There is none to match her."

Jenna cracked a slight smile and squeezed Nennef’s hand at the compliment.

The three of them started walking in the direction of Barmeth’s spaceship, its shadowy outline visible against the backdrop of the moving stars. Seeing Barmeth trip and almost fall, even with his small light, Jenna moved up ahead of the two non-Nenmaran men.

"You’d both best follow me, since I’m the only one who can see right now." She then led them straight to what appeared to her to be the door to Barmeth’s spaceship.

"How do I open it?" Jenna asked, feeling around the strange metal and studying the spaceship closely.

"Step back with me, my dear friends," Barmeth instructed. He reached out his finger and pointed at a specific spot on the spaceship. Immediately, the door cracked open and Jenna’s irises contracted to pinhole size in the bright light from the inside.

"Stop the light!" Jenna said urgently."Just cover your eyes, if they hurt, my dear lady," Barmeth suggested.

"It’s not my eyes," Jenna replied. "This bright light will draw attention from everyone for great distances. The last thing we need is to have the people from the city and everyone on the roads around it to come over here and see you, and this spaceship.

Barmeth crossed his fingers into a different pattern and stroked his index finger with his thumb. The spaceship blacked out. "I realized what you meant as you were saying it," he said to Jenna. "I should have thought of it myself earlier. Come, let’s go aboard and I’ll move the ship to a more secluded spot. How about the frozen uninhabited parts of the planet?"

"That’s probably the only place where the ship won’t be noticed," Nennef agreed. "You’re out in the open at any hour on Nenmar."

"My father says it’s too cold for people to survive in those regions," Jenna protested. "We’ll die there. He told of blustery winds and deep snow drifts, freezing temperatures and physical misery."

"The environment will be different inside my spaceship,"Barmeth reassured her. "I promise you will be both safe and comfortable. Come on, let’s hurry if our being discovered is as easy as you say it is. Now you can help us by leading us up the boarding ramp, since this human and I can’t see anything but the moving stars above." He reached out his hand for Jenna to lead him aboard his own spaceship.

Jenna took Nennef’s hand and placed it into Barmeth’s hand. "The two of you hold on to each other," she instructed. "I’ll lead you single file." She then took Nennef’s free hand and began to walk up the ramp. She was trembling with fear, and Nennef squeezed her hand. Once they all were inside and off the ramp, Barmeth pointed his fingers again and the door swiftly drew up and sealed. Jenna’s heart beat rapidly and her breathing was difficult. For the first time in her life, Jenna could see nothing; there was not even starlight in the small ante-compartment where they were.Then she saw Barmeth’s fingers pointing toward one of the walls, as a set of lighted dots appeared in a square on the wall.

"I guess you two can at least see those little lights on the wall," Jenna said. "I can see all around this small compartment, and the two of you. Barmeth, do you travel through space in this little box?"

"There’s much more to it than this," Barmeth explained, as he placed his middle and ring fingers into two lighted holes and waved crossed fingers on his other hand over the lighted control area. A sliding door opened, letting in a burst of light once again constricting Jenna’s irises. "This way," he invited his guests as he led them up a long ramp and into a room with beautiful furniture and a panoramic view of the outside.

"This is the ship’s stateroom. It’s where we watched you travel through space as you were encapsulated in the trade winds," Barmeth said to Nennef.

"Trade winds?" Nennef asked.

"I’ll explain later," Barmeth promised. "Our first task is to get the ship from where it can be observed by any curious Nenmarans." He gave Jenna a wry smile.Jenna cracked a slight smile and nodded in return; she was beginning to feel comfortable with this disarmingly charming Gattonian man.

"I would like you to meet my wife," Barmeth said. "Let me go fetch her."Nennef and Jenna looked at each other and then back at Barmeth. The Nenmaran word construction for "fetch" implied more that of picking up a useful tool than of inviting one’s lifetime mate to join in a social gathering

....

"Why do you call them trade winds?" Nennef asked.

"Because they are so predictable; spaceships can ‘ride’ them," Kaggla explained. "This is perfect for us, since we can conserve the ship’s power during interstellar travel for my experiments. Actually, one of the reasons we lost contact with you, Nennef, is because I had all the ship’s instruments set on one of my experiments tracking other organic matter caught in the trade winds. When we returned to look for you, we assumed, obviously incorrectly, that you would be living in the nearest city, which was Renlar. We didn’t even think of tiny Fenmon, where your lovely Nenmaran wife is from.

"Isn’t the name ‘Nennef’ a Nenmaran name?" Barmeth asked curiously.

"Yes it is," Jenna answered. "It means ‘man of Nenmar;’ appropriate, don’t you think? My husband’s native human name is‘Perry.’"

Barmeth nodded. "We had been wondering about the Earth man’s Nenmaran name."

"I have a question," Nennef said, with serious interest in his voice. "If you were so interested in me back when I was drifting with the cosmic trade winds, as you call them, why didn’t you try to help me then. As you can see, I’m settled here now; I have my own family among these people, and I’m well into the productive years of my life. It long since has been pointless for me to want to or even think about going back to Earth. Besides the academic satisfaction of tracking me down, what’s the point of finding me now?"

"Fair question, Nennef," Kaggla replied with a warm smile. "First, there is the academic reason you stated; but there are other, more significant reasons for our wanting to find you, which I’ll explain in a moment. For me to explain why we wanted to find you, other than a genuine concern for your welfare, I need to tell you some background, if you would please bear with me."

Nennef nodded.

"The cosmic trade winds carry and exchange like materials among similar planets. Because of this, there are countless peoples like humans, Nenmarans, and Gattonians all over the galaxy. They’re all compatible and able to interbreed. Peoples from several planets distant from each other already have successfully blended together. A few of these peoples, such as ours, have learned to travel through interstellar space, but most are not space travelers at all. The propulsion problems can be solved; it’s the time versus distance problems that require knowledge of an additional dimension of tangible existence that is not easy to explain in a single sitting. Kaggla thought for a moment, then continued. "We did not cause you to be caught up by the trade winds; I wouldn’t wish that on anybody. But we do have an important interest in you, your interactions, your progress and your welfare, since you were pulled through that dimension of existence.

"Jenna listened as Kaggla leaned forward while she spoke to Nennef: "Now, let me tell you why we’re still interested in you after all this time: Do you and your Nenmaran wife have any children that are born of her from your seed?"

"Yes," Jenna volunteered. "We have a boy and a girl. Let me answer your questions about our children."

"A typical possessive Nenmaran mother you are, dear Jenna," Kaggla observed. "Tell me about your children."