Earthaways

By Brenda Carlton

In this quirky tongue in cheek science fiction novel observers from outer space were left behind to monitor our planet tens of thousands of years ago. They live in hiding, watching and waiting for humans to develop. They have been called leprechauns, fairies, elves, or one of hundreds of other names. And humans have never been the smartest creatures on the planet.

But the secret is beginning to fray. Suzanne, a primatologist at the Philadelphia Zoo, has published a book proposing that many creatures of legend are based on sightings of a real species of secretive intelligent primates. Denzel and Madonna, the Earth nicknames of a pair of adolescent leps longing to be part of Earth society, are beginning to bend the rules and restrictions that govern their lives. Two intelligent species on Earth are about to meet.

(Warning: Contains adult material -- if you are an adult leprechaun)

• Language: English
• Publisher: Brenda Carlton
• Release date: Feb 11, 2014
• ISBN: 9781310354458

Brenda Carlton

Brenda J. Carlton is a Grammy with an itch to finally express herself. She loves gardening, painting, science and studying people. What is a jack of all trades with a lifetime of stored up sly observations to do except write? She also paints her own book covers.

Book preview

//EARTHAWAYS\\

By:

Brenda J. Carlton

-***-*-***-

Copyright© 2013 Brenda J. Carlton

Smashwords Edition

Cover Painting by Brenda J. Carlton 2013

Cover Photography Copyright© 2013 David Evans

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

All characters in this book are fictitious and any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

In this quirky tongue in cheek science fiction novel observers from outer space were left behind to monitor our planet tens of thousands of years ago. They live in hiding, watching and waiting for humans to develop. They have been called leprechauns, fairies, elves, or one of hundreds of other names. And humans have never been the smartest creatures on the planet.

But the secret is beginning to fray. Suzanne, a primatologist at the Philadelphia Zoo, has published a book proposing that many creatures of legend are based on sightings of a real species of secretive intelligent primates. Denzel and Madonna, the Earth nicknames of a pair of adolescent leps longing to be part of Earth society, are beginning to bend the rules and restrictions that govern their lives. Two intelligent species on Earth are about to meet.

(Warning: Contains adult material -- if you are an adult leprechaun)

// Chapter 1 \\

Protected from the falling snow by a dense white pine a six month old fawn nursed happily, unaware that his mother was determined to wean him within the week.

Twenty feet below the milky feast and half a mile away from the closest human in a secluded section of Valley Forge National Park, two adolescents were watching a native movie together to pass the time while the grandmothers were out on a mission. The male of the pair was a big fan of Denzel Washington, star of the movie they were watching, and so he had taken the native name Denzel as a nickname. Denzel’s best friend, a female, was better known as Madonna.

Madonna got bored with the movie, which they’d both seen many times at fast forward. I wish we could go out by ourselves, she said. The sounds that came out of her mouth sounded nothing like English, or even like human. She sounded more like a computer attempting to make contact with a FAX machine over a phone line.

She said that often, but this time Denzel reacted differently.

Let’s, said Denzel. He looked at her intently, showing that he was serious. The human freedom that they witnessed daily on the internet, the movies and the TV tormented both of them, but //\\ females were usually more cautious than the males. Please Madonna, he said. Let’s really do it.

Madonna was shocked. I was just complaining. I didn’t mean to really do it, she said. We would get in so much trouble. Neither of them had ever been out unless it was on a training mission with lots of supervision.

Madonna’s breasts turned red, signaling that she wanted to mate, mostly due to excess nervous energy. Denzel quickly complied with her wishes and the entire operation only lasted about three minutes. None of the youngsters or their teachers milling around at the other end of the school and recreation cabin paid the slightest bit of attention. Conception among the //\\ was a very rare event so they were all taught that no opportunity should be squandered. Each mating slightly increased the odds that the //\\ would continue to create new generations long enough to complete this mission.

Even a grandmother, a word that implied imperial and often erratic royalty, not kindly cookie-baking parents of parents, sometimes produced an occasional offspring. Madonna and Denzel actually had a great-great aunt born of the most recently deceased grandmother, who was younger that they were. It was fun to work out such family relationships and call them by Earth names but the //\\ did not think that way. Pregnant females were treated with extreme care and respect, but after the offspring was weaned it was considered to be equally related to everyone. Denzel and Madonna were currently the only two adolescents, being between the ages of one and two thousand Earth years, making them the first two who had matured as the Earth humans developed mass communications.

Denzel smoothed the fur back down around Madonna’s backside. The //\\ did not bother with clothing unless they had to go out in exceptionally bad weather. To avoid that problem during ice ages, they moved their headquarters, the Observatorpointship in which they had all arrived in the Earth year 32,189 B.C., to warmer areas where the most advanced civilizations of each era developed anyway. The //\\’s last intercontinental headquarters move was made to document the American Revolution, hence their current location in what was now a United States National Park. They still manned and maintained ten smaller satellite facilities around the world as always. They did not have much choice in that matter, since they were left an allotment of only ten Observatorganglionships when they were assigned to this planet to keep an eye on things. Observator assignments were a favorite method of Grandmotherfleet commanders to get rid of troublemakers.

No one will notice, Denzel said, very quietly. He turned to sneak a quick look over the back of the couch, and Madonna did the same. Look, they’re all busy, he said. He was anxious to get on with living, knowing his life expectancy to be half that of a female.

I guess we have learned everything there is to learn about being out, she answered thoughtfully. He waited, surprised and hopeful. You always were the brave one, she said.

I don’t know about that, said Denzel. Probably just the impatient one. For example, he was already sick to death of watching her dither and wanted to go do something else, but he hung in there forcing himself to wait a few more seconds. He indulged in a few dozen fantasies about the great adventures they could have outside.

Don’t be modest, she said. Her mind worked as quickly as his, but it was calculating the odds of everything that could possibly go wrong in each of her fantasies, and possible remedies for each scenario.

You know what? she said. Part of me wishes we did get caught by the humans.

I know, he said. Me too.

Madonna’s breasts turned red again, but this time she swatted Denzel away, her first act of rebellion against the teachings. She showed her teeth in a sign of aggression that was not aimed at Denzel, but at all the restrictions of their lives and tipped her head in the direction of the preparations hatches. He nodded eagerly and showed her all his teeth with a wild-eyed monkey smile signifying agreement, amazed that she was really going to go through with it.

One of the teachers at the other end of the cabin sensed that something was amiss. Known as Neil, as in Armstrong, he left his young charges and came over to investigate. The other five teachers closed ranks around their three young (less than a thousand Earth years) charges to compensate. With a two to one ratio between teachers and youngsters, education was a bit different among the //\\. Denzel and Madonna were past the formal part of their education and were simply waiting for a grandmother to die somewhere, so that everyone would move up a notch in seniority and Denzel, as the older of the two, would get an assignment. It could be decades, or even a century. As the least senior adult //\\ he already knew what the assignment would be. Housekeeper in the lowest status ganglionship outpost in Yellowstone, where the //\\ did their own monitoring of the status of the supervolcano. Then he would work his way through all the posts, with Madonna following behind, until he eventually returned to headquarters as a teacher in ten thousand years or so.

Neil jumped onto the back of the couch where Denzel and Madonna were getting up and they had to twist around to look at him. His specialty in Earth affairs, in addition to whatever current post he held, was human space exploration, so he was given to wearing a //\\-sized version of a space helmet most of the time. Denzel easily reached over the couch with his long arms to knock on the faceplate of the helmet. Going somewhere? he asked Neil turning the knocking turned into a drumbeat.

I was just going to ask you that \=+=/, said Neil, using Denzel’s real name in an attempt to be stern. He swatted Denzel’s hands away.

Madonna said, We were going to help Julia start dinner. Denzel was astounded yet again.

Oh, said Neil. He wandered unconcernedly back to the little ones.

You lied, said Denzel, when Neil moved out of earshot.

The humans do it all the time, said Madonna defensively.

I know, said Denzel. But…I mean… Wow.

Do you want to do this or not? Madonna demanded. She slipped quietly behind the human entertainments array without waiting for an answer and Denzel followed, still wondering what was happening, even though he had started it.

They tiptoed quietly past the human communications monitoring cabin, in case it was occupied, but it was empty. The //\\’s own computers recorded everything, and the grandmothers could sort through it all at their leisure. Their lives were much easier now, but also more boring, than in the old days when the missions involved real spy craft. Real missions these days, other than the perpetual gathering of nuts to eat, were only to bug a few important people who would invariably generate tons of audio intelligence that usually boiled down to yet another debate about ‘who’s got the biggest?"

In the preparations hatch Madonna took a hunting knife from the locker and put it in her sash with a determined look on her face that Denzel had never seen before. She removed her own dagger and replaced the missing hunting knife in the locker.

Well? she said, pointing at Denzel’s dagger.

Yes, ma’am, he said making a face and sticking his tongue out at her. He obediently switched his dagger for a human hunting knife. Somehow he’d lost all control of this adventure, which tended to happen often between him and Madonna.

The //\\ had very long tails that were mostly a nuisance except when they needed to climb around in trees, or nowadays, in the infrastructures of buildings and other human constructions. Traditionally they flipped their tails over one shoulder, left for males, and right for females, then across their chests like bandoliers, and kept them in place with a sash around their waists. The sash was actually a long thin rope folded and twisted in such a way that it could be flipped open in a single movement if need be. They traditionally tucked a dagger into the sash. When they went out they switched the daggers for human-manufactured hunting knives so that, should one be lost somewhere, it could not be identified as otherworldly. A //\\, like a traveler in any millennia, could survive many a fix with a long rope, a sharp blade and a way to start a fire. That last item was a bit different in the case of the //\\.

Ready? said Madonna.

As I’ll ever be, said Denzel. He began to suspect that this was a very bad idea. He began to fantasize about every disaster that could possibly befall them in rapid succession, while displaying only the utmost confidence to Madonna. The //\\ tended to have a little trouble keeping their quick minds on the subject at hand. Madonna, on the other hand, indulged in even wilder fantasies about fully integrated //\\ and human society. Her favorite was the one where a young female //\\, possibly her, would win an Oscar for best actress.

Suzanne Charles carefully removed the heart from Brogan, one of the Philadelphia Zoo’s adolescent male squirrel monkeys who had died unexpectedly during the night. She weighed the heart and announced the results to Hanna, one of her interns, who dutifully typed the data into a laptop. I really appreciate you guys coming in to assist on a Sunday morning, said Suzanne.

No problem. Our charges rarely consider our schedules when they decide to up and decease themselves for no reason, said Hanna. Suzanne laughed.

The other intern, Alan, looked up from his dissection of Brogan’s liver and said, Congratulations on the book, Suzanne. We didn’t know you were writing a book.

Suzanne said, Thank you. She thought for a minute while she extracted the spleen and then said, I guess I’m a little nervous about the response. My real career and my personal research are about to collide.

I bought the book, said Hanna. "I can’t comment until I read it, but I understand the general idea. I have to admit, it’s