Page 23 of Alien's Eternal Mate

I shook my head and gritted my teeth. I entered the ship, and immediately bent over with wracking coughs.

“Yeah, I should have warned you. The air inside is bad. You have to wait for it to clear out.”

I am an idiot! Why did I expect the ancient aliens to have breathed the same atmospheric gasses as the Masari? I just made a mockery of Xeno technology as a discipline and myself in particular.

I worked on the alien language while waiting for the air to cycle out. Lo watched, rapt with every new scribble. I stepped back from the wall and grunted in disgust.

“What’s wrong?”

“These characters represent numbers and arithmetic symbols, not the spoken or written language of the ancients. Useful, but not what’s needed to fully unlock the secrets of these ruins.”

Lo shook his head.

“You sound like a Sage, now.”

“A Sage?”

He nodded.

“Yes, they gather, preserve, and generate knowledge. At least, that’s what they’re always saying. They know how to draw up plans for new buildings, and when the best time to plant is, and whether or not it’s going to rain…all sorts of things.”

“How do the sages preserve their knowledge?”

“Preserve?”

I sighed.

“If I wanted to gain this knowledge for myself, how would I go about it?”

“Oh. You would have to be accepted by the Sages, and then you would have access to the computer archives. But they’re very picky about who they accept. You have to prove you’re going to add to the knowledge.”

“How do you know so much about them?”

He hung his head and sighed.

“I tried to join their ranks several times. Sages do not take lifemates or raise families, but the Academy provides everything they need.”

I understood. For someone in his wretched state, even a cloistered, monkish existence would seem like an improvement.

“Perhaps you could introduce me to these sages?”

“Of course. Ah, whenever I do something for you, that is, before you lost your memories, you would always buy me grilled satchna.”

“Very well.”

“And a loaf of Kitmus bread,” he added.

“That is acceptable…what do we use for currency?”

“You seriously don’t even remember that?”

He got a sad, pitying look.

“I could take advantage of you right now, but if you happen to turn back into the old Gro you’ll rip my lungs out through my nostrils.” He sighed. “All right, let me explain…”

He showed me the currency, which I had some of in my belt pouch and didn’t even realize. Glazed ceramic discs emblazoned with the symbol of the Starlost tribe. The discs were designed to be snapped into ten sections apiece.

A whole ceramic coin was a Yez, while the fragments were Yez bits, though most people just called them Bits.

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