Eight Heads, Eight Legs by K. R. Jones

Heat Rating: Zero

Content Warnings: None.

Katrina thought she understood the alien Grok.... Unfortunately she was wrong. Very wrong.

"We've got a problem down here, Doctor Reinke, an eight-legged problem and its stinking something fierce."

She blinked the sweat out of her dark eyes and brushed back her too long black hair. It was long past time she gave up on her currently stylish "hair of the people" and got a practical cut. As usual she was busy filling out official forms. Union Science Team 56-248-4668-XT-91-Nearside-128838-2-Carweckan-4 was like any other Union function; it required daily official reports to the multiple layers of advisors and auditors that made sure the Union functioned in accordance with all appropriate directives, standards and practices. As the Director of Operations she was required to initial every page, sign off on every report, maintain a hardcopy file for seven years and then swear that the data-cube copy was identical to the originals before the cube and its many copies entered the ever-changing number of electronic chains above her. The fact that the certified cube wouldn't be carried back to its first recipients for at least twelve months didn't matter a bit. It had to be done and it had to be done on schedule whether it was read or not. She tried to get the reports done in the relative cool of the early day and then engage in the research her three PhDs said she was uniquely qualified to do. Her real work was important, a crusade for knowledge and justice for a non-human intelligent species.

Of the hundreds of inhabitable worlds on the Nearside and the thousands of worlds on the Farside visited by humans, only Carweckan still had its dominant form of life in place. The Yankees had written off the system as a "Car Wreck." She considered the Yankees to be little better than pirates, but the pirates always seemed to beat the Union to every prize. One of their so-called Explorer Captains had been quoted openly "First to the table, take the best and leave the rest." The Grok-click-clack-click-clack-slither was the first dominant species that the Yankees had not destroyed or caged for their entertainment or profit before the Union got on the scene. By being useless they had survived and Carweckan escaped being plundered the Yankees.

Even more amazing, the Grok were highly intelligent and unique. They lived in an almost totally peaceful, cooperative society where every individual Grok instinctively knew its place and function. As she had exclaimed in a glowing Net Cast documentary, "We could learn a lot from them!"

Katrina Reinke came to Carweckan to learn. But first she had to undo some left over human-centricism. When she had arrived, the most pleasant common term for the creatures was "Spiders" because the creatures had eight legs. She had tried to enforce the multiple phonetic sounds the Grok made, but she settled on the abbreviated first sound, "Grok." Even now the blue berets supposedly guarding her and her scientists constantly made references to the Grok as eight legged problems.

She stood up. Her blouse and pants stuck to her skin, but she was not about to introduce air-conditioning or even worse weather control. That was a Yankee approach. She was a naturalist and could live with discomfort.

She had to wipe her eyes three times as she made it down the poorly lit stairs to the Grok receiving area on the ground floor. The distinct smell of the Grok told her that it was very upset about something. The smell said this was worse than a violation of some ancient Grok path of moving or placing some obstruction in some place that had long been empty. The Grok did not like change. No this was a smell that implied something far more disturbing.