First Contact

An immunologist is not a bad person to have on board a mission of exploration given that indigenous life might have some practical value before it is exposed to foreign pathogens and decimated in short order—an extreme case of the principle that observer interference disturbs and distorts the prior condition of the subject, however inadvertent, introducing an unknown degree of uncertainty to the initial knowledge of the subject.

That was part of the sales pitch she used to get on board the riverboat. A previously-unrecorded tribe had recently been spotted by a reconnaissance plane, and the boat was going upstream towards the headwaters to locate and communicate with (or 'pacify' in the words of the surly captain) the people.

The other part had been more convincing for the captain and his crew. With the moral support of the paymaster and a small contingent of heavily-armed mercenaries in camouflage fatigues, she persuaded captain and crew that her studies of the native environment and peoples would benefit the expedition's funders—an international consortium of mining companies who were keen to tap the vast copper reserves of the river basin in a sort of jeux sans frontières on this ethnologically diverse island so remote from social and technological systems prevalent elsewhere on Earth. Estimates as high as 800 numbered the documented languages spoken here, and the sheer complexity of communication with such a vast number of linguistic groups was an important factor in uniting the efforts of such a disparate group of nations as South Africa, Australia, China, Chile, the U.S. and the U.K.

Now, in social situations she was very nearly describable as a wallflower, but when it came to her work, that shyness evaporated like a morning mist. With the captain and crew, she held her own and brooked no affected politeness and certainly no masculine condescension. Their employers had sent a clear message to the curmudgeonly captain and his roguish hands that the immunologist's report would be very important for the environmental impact statement that had to pass the review of the PNG Government and its NGO advisors who were already skeptical of the entire enterprise, one of whom characterized it as "a rape of one of Earth's last unexploited human habitats."

The captain, two translators and the immunologist were aboard the rowboat that made first contact with a tribe for whom no records existed. (It is unknown whether this was the tribe identified by the flyover.) On approaching one of the outlying buildings near the riverbank, the captained hailed a thunderous 'Hello!' which the translators repeated in several different languages and dialects. Silence. Then, three soft whistles sliced through the humid air, marking the trajectory of three separate arrows each of which pierced the throat of one of the party's speakers.

The immunologist was all alone with warriors on both sides of the river, bows stretched to the ready. Delirium and panic seized her, and for a full two minutes the warriors remained motionless and soundless, bows cocked.

"Hello?" came a distinctly different voice pattern, but not from the boat.

Moving in front of the row of archers, a man of matte silver emerged, and all the bows were lowered.