When the human expedition arrived, the kloormari inhabitants of Kuw'baal welcomed them-especially Kelvoo, who formed a strong friendship with first-contact administrator Sam Buchanan. The kloormari in Kelvoo's village came to respect, admire, and trust all humans.
After the expedition departs, a new human visitor convinces Kelvoo and eight other kloormari to join a "goodwill mission" to faraway star systems. Kelvoo's team soon learns that not all humans are intelligent, benevolent, and trustworthy when they realize that the captain and crew of Jezebel's Fury are a self-serving gang of criminals. Enslaved and forced to participate in an interplanetary crime spree, Kelvoo's team must use their intelligence and knowledge of humans to survive their captivity and attempt a daring escape.
Meanwhile back on Kuw'baal, the kloormari experience irreversible changes in the wake of human contact.
Written from Kelvoo's perspective, Kelvoo's Testimonial is a thrilling tale of survival and a wrenching insight into human nature.
When the human expedition arrived, the kloormari inhabitants of Kuw'baal welcomed them-especially Kelvoo, who formed a strong friendship with first-contact administrator Sam Buchanan. The kloormari in Kelvoo's village came to respect, admire, and trust all humans.
After the expedition departs, a new human visitor convinces Kelvoo and eight other kloormari to join a "goodwill mission" to faraway star systems. Kelvoo's team soon learns that not all humans are intelligent, benevolent, and trustworthy when they realize that the captain and crew of Jezebel's Fury are a self-serving gang of criminals. Enslaved and forced to participate in an interplanetary crime spree, Kelvoo's team must use their intelligence and knowledge of humans to survive their captivity and attempt a daring escape.
Meanwhile back on Kuw'baal, the kloormari experience irreversible changes in the wake of human contact.
Written from Kelvoo's perspective, Kelvoo's Testimonial is a thrilling tale of survival and a wrenching insight into human nature.
As the morning horizon of the Kuw’baal sky began its timeless transformation from black to grey, I made my way to the algel falls where I assumed my meditative stance, closed the lid over my eye, and let the slurping and plopping of the falls lull me into a deep state of meditation. I began the process of sorting, cataloging, and cross-referencing the inputs since my previous session as I prepared myself for another day or two of work, reading, and satisfying my primal urge for learning.
As the grey sky brightened to its full whiteness and intensity, my auditory senses picked up the growl of distant thunder. Although thunder that early in the day was unusual, it was not unheard of, so my meditation was not interrupted until the sound continued for far too long without fading away.
My external senses took over, jolting me into full consciousness. I swiveled my auditory receptors toward the sound, which was becoming a roar reminiscent of intense rain pummeling a roof. I scrabbled up the steep gravel path to the top of the falls, having to use my claspers to assist my lower limbs as pebbles slid beneath me and kicked out behind me. The rise of ten meters afforded me a better view.
I scanned the distant land. To my left was the gentle slope where the village homes were perched. The slope ended in the stream of water and algel that meandered and slid past the village. The opposing bank was lined with loose boulders, some of which had been arranged as stepping stones for fording the stream. Beyond the stream and farther to my right was a vast mineral plain with crystalline and powdery deposits brightly reflecting patches of white, yellow, red, and rich browns. Farther right, the distant ridges bordering the plain were closer, revealing bands of black, beige, and yellow where surface rock had fallen away during ancient upheavals. This narrowed the plain to a valley between my position atop the falls and the ridge. A rocky moraine of jumbled, jagged boulders sloped from my location down to the plain.
The roar continued to increase in intensity.
As I concentrated on the farthest land close to the horizon, a dark speck on top of a bright light appeared in the sky on the other side of the ridge. This was astonishing. Apart from a thrown object, I had never seen an object moving above the land unless it was falling directly down like raindrops or a rock. The speck sped toward the village above the ground and yet below the sky as if it had been thrown but would not fall back to the ground. This was confusing.
The speck grew larger and louder. Then, as it approached, it slowed and moved closer to the ground. The speck became a black object, resembling a rounded cube. It rode atop a bright light as though the light from the entire sky had been replicated and concentrated into a single point. The object rotated and then descended vertically toward a flat shelf of ground slightly higher than the mineral plain adjoining it.
From my vantage point, I saw eighty-seven villagers running onto the plain. I joined the rush, slipping, bouncing, and painfully scraping my way down the boulders to the plain and then breaking into a run toward the object’s apparent destination. The roar became so painfully loud that we had to stop at 124.3 meters from the object’s target point. I was relieved that we stopped short as huge clouds of dust and chunks of mineral deposits radiated out from below the object like a powerful wind blowing straight down. My eyelid closed shut, and my inhalations stopped short as we were engulfed in dust and debris. I folded myself into a ball as a wave of heat, gravel, and sharp mineral crystals scoured my skin. Acrid, unfamiliar odors stung my olfactory receptors.
The roaring did not fade away as thunder would; it simply stopped instantly. The hot wind halted, replaced by a natural breeze. Through my eyelid, I sensed the ambient light getting brighter. I blinked away dust from the surface of my eye as the cloud cleared and the dust settled downwind, revealing the object. It rested solidly on the plain, supported by four straight sticks, each extending at the same angle from each corner of the object. The object’s outer surfaces not covered with dust were as black as night and yet as reflective as water or algel. Shapes extended from the overall cube with bulbous or angular profiles. Black marks radiated from the ground below the object’s center, fanning out in every direction.
For those of us gathered around the object, our senses were nearly overwhelmed. Our species had no prior experience with such events. Our group circled the object, making observations from each angle. We chattered with other villagers as we peppered one another with raw observational data. The chattering grew as hordes of additional villagers came running toward the object.
Kwazka, an elder, approached the front of the crowd. The tightly packed blue speckles on Kwazka’s upper limbs and eyelid indicated great age and implicit wisdom. Instead of participating in the chatter, Kwazka circled the object slowly, taking in the scene. The only sounds that Kwazka made were short, pure tones of varying frequencies directed at the object in order to process the echoes to determine the object’s hardness and various structural attributes.
We had no fear of the object, because we had no experience of danger from unmoving objects on flat ground. We kept several meters away to process the object’s overall features before moving in for closer, more detailed analysis.
A villager named Ksoomu stepped closer. When Ksoomu was within 5.2 meters from the object, it produced a buzzing sound, growing louder as Ksoomu drew closer. At a distance of 4.3 meters, we heard a short snap. A thin strand of blue lightning extended from the object to the center of Ksoomu’s mass. Along with Ksoomu, we all jumped back, trying to make sense of what had just happened.
“Are you intact?” Kwazka asked.
“I experienced only mild irritation,” Ksoomu replied. “I jumped back because I was startled.”
Ksoomu made a second, slower approach. At the same distance as before, a more intense buzz sounded, and then a louder snap rang out with a brighter strand of lightning. Ksoomu emitted an exclamation of pain while falling to the ground. “I felt a sting, but I am otherwise undamaged,” Ksoomu remarked. “I shall make one more attempt.”
A child named K’raftan, twenty-three years of age, stepped forward. “I will approach at the same time to see how the object reacts to simultaneous advances.”
The same events repeated. This time, at 4.3 meters, a bang as loud as lightning rang out. A blindingly intense bolt extended in two directions as both kloormari were propelled back several meters. At first, we feared they were dead. Black marks were clearly visible on their skin, surrounding a blistered wound. On closer inspection, we realized that both of them were unconscious, in a state resembling meditation but not responsive to external stimuli. Ksoomu and K’raftan began to stir, slowly regaining their senses.
K’raftan’s inquisitiveness was clearly stronger than the will to avoid pain. “I shall try again with a faster approach.”
“No!” Kwazka shouted. “This object presents a potential danger to those who approach. We cannot allow our curiosity to cost the life of any member of our community. We shall remain 4.6 meters from the object, and we shall move farther away if it buzzes. Is there any dissent among us?” Nobody raised any objections, so Kwazka continued. “I propose that we record and process all that we have experienced so far. Let us form a group that includes the scribes to record our preliminary observations and experiences. A second group can commence meditation to process and refine the preliminary data. When that is completed, let us record and redistribute the refined information. In the meantime, those who are not in a group can return to the village, and a small group can remain here to monitor the object. Is this agreeable to all?”
We all vocalized our agreement and began sorting out our groupings as we started to disperse.
“Look!” K’raftan exclaimed.
We turned around to see a limb unfolding from the top of the object and assuming an upright position. A cylindrical “hand” with a reflective end rotated and then stopped. We gathered around the object. To get a better view, I walked to one side. The hand rotated to stay pointed at me as I moved. When I stopped, the hand stopped. A couple of villagers moved together in the other direction, and the hand rotated to follow them.
“Could that be an eye that has only a limited arc of vision?” a young villager speculated. “Is it, perhaps, observing us?”
“Could the buzzing and lightning from the object have been a warning and a self-defence maneuver?” another villager suggested.
These concepts were an epiphany and a shock to us all.
This was no object; this was a living creature!
This is the weirdest review I’m ever going to write, because the author himself has made a comment in the story, inadvertently summing up the problem with his own writing.
Let me explain…
This is a Science Fiction novel in the format of a report on a First Encounter with an alien species, written by Kelvoo, one of the participants. The alien species is humans. Kelvoo’s species have perfect memories, and they observe events in incredible detail.
At the end of the story, when Kelvoo is getting human assistance in writing his report, we see this advice:
“Humans don’t have the attention span to read a minute-by-minute account of the finest details of a story. It’s about finding the right balance. You need to relate the important events while still including various anecdotes and observations that will hold the reader’s interest and make your characters relatable.”
Unfortunately, this author has not found that balance. He has spent a great deal of time and imagination in creating a wonderful world and a completely new species. Then he spends the whole of Part I describing in the finest detail Kelvoo’s observations and impressions of his interactions with humans.
In doing this, he creates a marvellous main character that we get to know and empathize with, but there is little conflict and no suspense for the first 40% of the novel.
Then we get to Part II, the action starts, and we have a perfectly good story until almost the end. Then the complexities return to get in the way of a highly appropriate ending in Part III, which is redeemed by stronger thematic material, dealing in a meaningful way with the ill effects of even the best-intentioned colonialism on indigenous peoples.
In the end, this book needs three ratings: Part I – 2 stars, Part II – 5 stars, Part III – 4 stars.
Recommended for those interested in worldbuilding at its finest. If you only want action, conflict, and suspense, I suggest starting around Chapter 16.