Birds of Prey - Bisexual Edition

"Certainly a...large specimen," he muttered as he entered the data into a handheld computer. "I must time your heartbeat, where is it located, please?"

Jaeger gestured to his chest, the alien's headdress flashing pink again, it looked like he was fighting to suppress it. Jaeger wasn't sure what pink meant, could it be their equivalent of blushing, or maybe embarrassment?

"It's alright," he said, trying to reassure the alien. "Here, let me help you." He reached up and took Yaotl's hand in his, feeling the alien jump at his touch, then guided it towards his chest. "You won't be able to feel it through the glove, though."

"Wait...I have a scanner that I can-"

Jaeger had seen Maza do it before, and so he a had good idea of how the seals on their wrists worked, popping it with a hiss of escaping air and sliding it off. The alien's two clawed fingers twitched, his fine scales as smooth and as soft as human skin as Jaeger took his hand again, setting the glove down on the table beside him.

"B-but it's against protocol," the nurse protested, "there are hygiene concerns..."

Jaeger ignored him, planting his bare hand against his pectoral muscle, just over his heart. He felt the alien's fingers move, testing the firmness, sliding against his slippery skin.

"Do you feel it?" Jaeger asked.

"Yes..."

"So? Time it."

The nurse snapped out of his stupor, paying more attention as he felt the human's heart pulse beneath his palm. He lingered there for a few more moments, then turned his attention back to the computer, typing in some unknown metrics. Next, he tried to test Jaeger's blood pressure. The armband-shaped device was immediately recognizable, but the little alien couldn't find anywhere that it would fit. The upper arms of the Valbarans were only the size of a human wrist, and so trying to get it around his bicep was hopeless. The nurse eventually gave up.

He shone a light in Jaeger's eyes to test his response, opened his mouth to examine his teeth, and then asked him to breathe into what looked like a breathalyzer test. Something about that seemed to confuse the nurse, and he reexamined Jaeger's chest, watching as it rose and fell. He produced a cup-shaped tool that he seemed to be using to listen to his breathing, sliding it across his patient's torso, unable to find whatever it was that he was searching for.

"What are you trying to do?" Jaeger asked, becoming frustrated with the little creature again.

"I need to make a record of your breathing, but I...I can't locate your thoracic air sacks."

"I don't know what those are, you mean my lungs?" Yaotl looked up at him, flashing his feathers in confusion. "Here, try this if your tool isn't working."

Jaeger took the alien's tiny head in his hand, the span of his fingers almost large enough to encompass it entirely, and pressed it up against his chest. He wasn't quite sure where the alien's ears were, they didn't have any visible flaps, and so what resulted was more him sliding Yaotl's face against his torso. He froze up, his little body shaking and his feathers fluffing up in bright pinks and yellows, the downy plumes tickling Jaeger's skin as they brushed against him.

He felt the alien's bare hand grip his hip in surprise, Yaotl's eyelids fluttering as he breathed in Jaeger's scent, his head rising and falling along with the human's barrel chest. The scales on his face were soft too, varnished to a bright sheen, as smooth as glass.

The Valbaran lingered there for a little too long, then skipped away, hopping off the side of the table and down onto the floor as if he was afraid of Jaeger. It didn't make much sense to him, Maza had no respect for personal space, so why was this alien reacting so strongly to such innocuous contact?

"What's wrong?" he asked, the nurse fumbling with his tablet computer as he tried in vain to control the fluttering of his plumes.

"I-I have what is needed," he stammered, "please clothe yourself and return with me."

Jaeger shrugged, stooping to pick up his discarded garments and putting them back on, catching Yaotl staring at him when he pulled his shirt back over his head. The little nurse averted his eyes again, examining the floor intently.

"So what's my diagnosis?" Jaeger joked, trying to keep the alien talking in an attempt to set him more at ease.

"You are...larger than any male that I have ever seen," the nurse admitted as he let his eyes linger on Jaeger's torso. "Larger than any female. You smell...alien."

"I meant the measurements that you took."

The alien flared his feathers in reds and pinks, quickly turning his eyes down to his tablet computer.

"I-I don't know how to convert it into Earth'nay metrics," he admitted. "The doctors will be able to tell you more. Please, come."

***

The doctor used her laser pointer to draw their attention to one of the large monitors that were mounted on the wall, which was displaying a pair of three-dimensional renderings side by side, X-rays of human and Valbaran skeletons that slowly rotated. Everyone crowded around, Baker still sat on the examination table as they watched in fascination.

"Here we can see the most obvious differences," the doctor began, "in the skeletal structure and the respiratory system."

She traced the line of the Valbaran spine with her pointer, dark cavities standing out against the lighter bone. It looked like the skeleton had holes running through it.

"In Val'ba'ra'nay, we can see that the respiratory system extends deeper into the body, with anterior, posterior, and thoracic air sacks. There are air pockets along the vertebrae, as well as inside the femur and the humerus, that expand along with the lungs to fill with oxygen. This makes the skeleton lighter, thus reducing the energy required to move it, and also provides a larger store of oxygen that can be expended more rapidly. We inhale and exhale through pressure changes, the expansion and contraction of muscles in the sternum either drawing in or pushing out air. Val'ba'ra'nay physiology is very fuel efficient."

She turned her pointer towards the human skeleton now, the red dot sliding down the spine.

"In the Earth'nay, on the other hand, we see no such air pockets. The bones are heavy and solid, and the respiratory system consists of a simple pair of lungs. Here we see what is called a diaphragm, a sheet of muscle and fibrous tissue that extends across the bottom of the thoracic cavity. When this structure contracts, it creates a partial vacuum inside the thorax, causing the lungs to expand and take in air. It's far less efficient than the Val'ba'ra'nay method, but there are advantages associated with this system, stronger bones being one of them. Although it could be argued that lighter bones present different advantages, it's a hard comparison to make, as the two species have evolved to fill very different ecological niches. This brings us to the next major difference," she said as she swung her pointer down towards the legs.

The view zoomed in on the muscles, cross-sections expanding to fill the monitor.

"As you may know, there are several types of muscle. Skeletal, cardiac, voluntary, and involuntary, for example. The primary kinds of muscle fibers responsible for moving the skeleton can be divided into two categories, what we call fast-twitch and slow-twitch. The former provides rapid, powerful contractions, while the latter provides slower contractions with greater endurance."

She moved her laser to the Valbaran X-ray, pointing at the muscle fibers.

"Save for the cardiac and respiratory muscles, almost all of the muscle fibers that we see in Val'ba'ra'nay skeletal muscles are fast-twitch. They can produce proportionally impressive speed and force, but only in short bursts, the subject tiring very quickly and needing to recuperate before activity can resume. Meanwhile, the muscle fibers in Earth'nay are far more evenly distributed, with a focus on extreme endurance. Based on the factors that we've just outlined, we can conclude that a healthy Earth'nay could potentially run, or indeed perform other strenuous activities, for dramatically longer than even the fittest Val'ba'ra'nay. The differences don't stop there."

Well, there was the explanation as to how Maza could move so fast, and why she had so little stamina. Her whole body was designed to provide short, brutal bursts of power and speed, which had no doubt been advantageous during their time as ambush hunters. A Valbaran would have burst out from the undergrowth and attacked with such speed and ferocity that the prey wouldn't even have been able to react before it was dead. There was no need for endurance if the target could be dispatched quickly enough, and if one of them failed, the rest of the flock would get the job done.

"Something that is far harder to demonstrate are the neurological differences," she said as the image changed to what looked like CAT scans of the two respective subjects. "It might not be apparent to a layman, but there are subtle differences in the way that the neural pathways are formed. I have prepared a simple experiment that I believe should give you a better understanding."

She lowered her pointer and pulled out her tablet computer, tapping at the touch screen before handing it to Jaeger. On the screen were a series of shapes, perhaps twenty of them in a row. Triangles, squares, circles, and hexagons. A dozen different icons all laid out in a sequence. It was just like the logic puzzles that Evans had used to test the Valbarans when they had first boarded the Rorke.

"Please pay attention to the sequence," the doctor said. After a moment, she took the tablet from him and passed it to Maza, who examined the shapes intently for a few seconds before handing it back. "Now," the doctor continued, "describe the sequence of shapes."

"From memory?" Jaeger asked, perplexed.

"Yes, from memory."

"I can't," he admitted with a shrug, "I could maybe tell you the first four or five, but I'd need to study it for a lot longer than that to remember the entire sequence."

"Can you tell me how many individual shapes the sequence was comprised of?"

"No," he said, shaking his head. "Not with any certainty."

The doctor gestured to Maza, who promptly recited the entire sequence by memory, and then listed the number of individual shapes. The two humans stared at her, their eyes wide. Evans had said that the aliens possessed an accelerated capacity for learning, but it hadn't dawned on him until now just how different their capabilities were. They had looked at the same picture for the same amount of time, and Maza had been able to recall it like she had taken a photograph, while Jaeger had scarcely been able to remember the beginning of the sequence.

"We can see in these scans," the doctor continued, "that the neural pathways in Earth'nay are both weaker and take longer to form. This results in an overall weaker and less efficient memory. The same logic applies to non-declarative memories, which impact motor skills. When a Val'ba'ra'nay learns, the neural pathways cement themselves very quickly, which means that muscle memory actions can be performed with extreme speed and precision. The Earth'nay seem to entirely lack stacking behavior, whereby sequences of learned actions can be executed one after another. Let's take martial arts as an example, where stances and moves are learned by rote, repeated over and over again until it becomes second nature and the individual in question no longer has to think about what they're doing. They merely react, bypassing the conscious mind almost entirely. The individual sees a kick coming their way, non-declarative memory is accessed to find the appropriate reaction, and that action is then executed with very little delay. This phenomenon exists in Earth'nay, but it is massively reduced, almost entirely absent in comparison to what we're familiar with."

"So that's how you were able to fight so quickly when we sparred," Jaeger said, turning to Maza. "You weren't thinking, it was like your body was running on auto-pilot."

"Combined with our great speed and strength, the advantages are obvious," the doctor continued. "However, there is one significant detriment, one that does not exist in Earth'nay. Maza, what would you do if you found yourself in an entirely unforeseen situation? One which you had no prior knowledge of, and no plan for?"

"I would stop what I was doing and consult with my flock to formulate a new plan," she said, as if it was an obvious answer.

"See, here is where the disadvantage lies. In the time that it would take you to assess the situation and come up with an appropriate response, an Earth'nay would have already adapted and changed its strategy."

"How do you mean?" she asked, flashing her feathers in confusion.

"Because they don't plan extensively, and they don't rely on non-declarative memory in the way that Val'ba'ra'nay do, they have developed an incredible ability to adapt to a changing environment. The plasticity of their neural pathways is incredible. Where evolution has robbed them of one attribute, it has substituted another. Where a Val'ba'ra'nay must plan extensively in advance, drawing from practice and experience to tackle a problem, an Earth'nay can think entirely on the fly. They don't need to waste precious time formulating a new plan. I can only describe it as a kind of emergent thought pattern."

Now it was the flock's turn to stare at the two humans in awe, their violet eyes wide and their plumes puffed up in shades of yellow. Jaeger was having a hard time wrapping his head around the concept. So the aliens performed tasks, and even thought, like a computer program going through a sequence of commands? That explained the odd pauses during conversation. What was that like? What was their experience of the world, where an unexpected event or situation could completely throw them off to the point that they practically had to retreat in order to collect themselves? Was that why it had taken them so long to make contact out in the asteroid field?

Perhaps the answer once again lay in their evolutionary history. Humans had lived through ice ages and the extinction of innumerable species, they had spread across the world and faced all manner of diverse climates and dangers. It was through adaptation that they had endured, the ability to change along with their surroundings.

What if instead of being adaptable, the Valbarans had evolved to be absurdly efficient at their chosen tasks? It was certainly possible, rising to dominance simply by being the most brutally efficient and perfectly sculpted predators for their given environment, developing society and eventually civilization through a cooperation that transcended simple pack behavior. They were like savants in a way, inhumanly proficient in their specific fields of interest, but inflexible and inhibited outside of them.

"Y'all are gonna have to help me get this straight," Baker said, addressing his question to Maza and her flock. "How much plannin' do y'all do, exactly?"

"Everything is planned," Xico replied. "We formulated a plan for what we were going to do this afternoon, for example, we reached consensus before we left the house. We knew whether we would be walking or taking scooters, we knew precisely which mag-lev stations to travel to, and where they were located. We knew what the weather would be like, and what clothing would be appropriate to wear. We had planned for potential encounters with crowds of strangers, we had discussed what questions might be asked, and how we might escort you safely to the hospital. We had several contingencies prepared in case our appointment with the head physicians was delayed due to some kind of large scale accident or emergency."

"So you live your entire lives on a predetermined itinerary?" Jaeger asked in disbelief. "How would you possibly have the time to plan all of that?"

"Our language is a lot faster than yours," Maza said, "we can convey information much more quickly."

"The speech center of the brain is also more developed," one of the doctors added, "which means that more information can be processed."

"Well this is some information that we can bring back to Fielding," Jaeger said. "Can we...transfer the data? Have they finished writing software that can interface Valbaran and UNN technology yet?"

"I can do you one better," Baker said, waving his phone at Jaeger. "Recorded the whole presentation."

"That's...surprisingly clever of you, Baker."

"If I learned one thing at Texas A&M, it was how to take notes durin' a lecture without havin' to do any writing."

"We will continue to study the data that we collected," Doctor Matla said, "these are only the preliminary findings. We will keep you updated as much as we are able. I suspect that it will become easier to share information once your engineers are able to finish work on the software that you mentioned. Thank you for your assistance, Earth'nay. Nurse, please see our guests to the elevator."

That was their cue to leave, Baker hopping down from his seat on the examination table as the rest of the party made for the door, following behind the male Valbaran. He led them out into the carpeted corridor again, Jaeger only just remembering to duck beneath the door frame in time to avoid hitting his head.

As they walked down the corridor, Maza tapped him on the arm, gesturing for him to lean down so that she could whisper to him.

"You wanted to see Val'ba'ra'nay courtship? Watch this..."

She whistled, and then her flock rushed forwards, surrounding the hapless male like wolves about to bring down a deer. He was frightened at first, his feathers flashing blue and yellow, his eyes snapping between the five females. The two humans watched in fascination as the ritual began.

Coza stepped out of the circle, the male turning to face her. He seemed at once worried and flattered, his body language submissive as he looked down at the carpet and fluttered his ornate plumes in shades of pink and purple. The flock moved as one, closing ranks behind her, swaying gently to the left and right as though they were building up to a dance number.

Coza suddenly flashed her plumes, the feathers standing up on her head and forearms, the suitor pressing her arms together horizontally in front of her to create a symmetrical display. Rather than just one or two colors, the layered feathers cycled, creating a hypnotic wave pattern as they shifted and moved to reveal the hues beneath them. The females standing behind her did the same, opening their feather sheaths and angling the plumes so that their friend was framed by them, creating an explosion of cycling colors from the male's perspective. His eyes snapped to the lead female, captivated, her slow swaying seeming to hypnotize him like a cobra being charmed by a pipe player. He cocked his head, his own massive headdress extending, fluttering as it replicated the color pattern.

It was so elaborate and complex, like watching a pair of tropical birds engaged in a mating display, Jaeger couldn't pull his eyes away from it. The swaying grew faster, as did the rhythmic fluttering of the multicolored feathers, the rest of the flock following the lead like backup dancers. They rolled their hips in perfect synchronization, shaking their arms and heads to make the feathers vibrate, the sound that they produced was almost like that of a rattlesnake.

The male began to shake his head too, the large, peacock-like feathers with their circular tips blurring into an iridescent haze. It looked to Jaeger like he was having a colorful seizure. The pattern that it created seemed to float in the air, the thinner stalks that linked the main body of the plume to the ornate tips rendered nearly invisible by the rapid motion.