The Tellefontu
New Yugoslavia, 2215 a.d.
The last of the lost planets, New Gambia, had been found. In this case, Earth's forces had won early and easily. They were running the place as a fairly benevolent dictatorship until our ship arrived and told them that despite everything, they had lost the war. It took months before our diplomats, and Earth's, could convince them to just go home. Even then, many of the occupying troops decided to stay where they were, especially those who had married local girls.
The Tellefontu were extremely reticent to talk about themselves, their customs, and their history. Still, over the years, a great deal was learned about them from casual remarks that they made privately, in conversations, in formal interviews, and on talk shows.
They were an ancient race, far older than even the Mitchegai. Their recorded history went back more than thirty-five million years, and their legends went back even farther.
They had a wide variety of art forms, including music, dance, the graphic arts, drama, literature, poetry, architecture, and at least nine others that were completely incomprehensible to humans.
They were capable of redesigning their own bodies, and indeed their own equivalent of DNA, to make themselves into whatever they wanted to be. They did this without the use of external machinery. Yet such was the extreme conservative streak in their nature that they were not at all interested in looking like anything else than what they were.
"Well, yes, of course," one of their representatives said to a talk show hostess. "I could, with considerable time and effort, make myself look like a human being. Even a very attractive human being like yourself. But, why would I want to do that? I am contented to be myself. Also, ask yourself, Would you want to make yourself look like me? I am, you know, a very attractive member of my own species. At least my spouses have always said so. I think that it is best if humans remain looking like humans, and Tellefontu remain looking like Tellefontu."
While by no means immortal, they did not have a definite life span. They could rebuild their bodies as necessary, and they had conquered all possible diseases. Many of them were thousands of years old. Death, when it came, was normally by accident, or other misadventure.
They were hermaphrodites, with each individual being simultaneously male and female. During mating, both partners were impregnated. The partners produced a single clutch of typically twenty eggs, one half of which was produced by each of them.
They then alternated, taking turns caring for the children and making a living. Once the children were raised and educated, a process that took several hundred years, the parents departed in a friendly fashion, and rarely saw either their former spouses or their children again.
As one of them put it, "After three hundred years, you get very much sick of them."
They did remain close to their siblings, however, and said that when the Mitchegai invasion finally came, they would fight in small platoons made up of siblings.
While they were perfectly capable of building and using machines, they generally preferred not to. They liked their existence to be as natural as possible.
While they were capable of living on land indefinitely, they felt most comfortable living an aquatic existence. "You humans go swimming on occasion, and you are enjoying the experience certainly very much. Yet you soon are wanting to get out of the water. We Tellefontu are just the same, but quite the opposite, you see. I think that we can definitely share this planet very nicely, without interfering with each other, but lending each other a hand when it is thought to be appropriate."
Laws had been passed on New Yugoslavia, giving them the oceans, although we were allowed to fish commercially at certain times and places, and to engage in sport fishing provided that we restricted it to hook and line. Also, they were given ownership of those islands that had been declared primitive nature preserves, provided that the original fauna and flora were actually preserved.
They were familiar with all aspects of space flight, but after some early experiments with it for scientific purposes, they had decided that it wasn't for them. They had been prepared to stay on their own planet for all time, having none of the outward-driving instincts that both humans and Mitchegai possess.
On their home planet, their astronomers had seen the Mitchegai invasion fleet approaching, and had been able to give their people a few months' warning. In that short time, they had been able to build weapons enough to give the invaders a stiff fight, but not enough to win. Scarcely a thousand of them had been able to escape, and make it to New Yugoslavia, over twelve hundred years ago.
They were searching the other planets in Human Space, looking for other possible refugee groups, but hadn't found any yet. There was some discussion about possibly colonizing other planets, to insure their racial continuity in the event that New Yugoslavia fell to the enemy, but nothing had been done, yet.
Once on New Yugoslavia, they had dedicated themselves to rebuilding their civilization, and replenishing their numbers. There were now over eight million adult Tellefontu living here, and seven times that number of children.
They had resolved that they would not again suffer what they had before. The next time the Mitchegai came, they would be better prepared, and they would be victorious.
They saw the humans as a way to help them do that.