Senses come awake
as he taps her on the shoulder and signals to her to be quiet.
Visibility is restricted to little more than an arms length in all
directions, so she halts and listens. The breeze, cool and fresh,
blows in from the sea and the air is full of the sound of the rushes
creaking and rubbing against each other. Each gust sends a wave of
movement through the thumb-thick stems and she can see nothing except
for this densely packed purple-brown sway.
The music of the
reeds, is hypnotic, washing over and through them. The sun is still
forcing its burning, late afternoon light through the hazy,
mote-laden sky. They stand, breathing stilled, searching without
moving. Then there is a snort, something new, something close. He
pushes at her shoulder and suddenly they are running.
The rushes bend
down in front of her and then spring back up, the sticky tongues at
their tips dragging at her clothing and slowing her down. She takes
his example, bending slightly at the waist and fending the reeds to
her sides with her outstretched arms. It is hard going and they are
running blind.
Behind them
something scythes through the reeds, she can her its snorting
expulsion of breath getting closer. She wills more strength into her
legs, ignores the battering her arms are getting from the stems,
resists turning her head to see. Peering ahead, trying to divine the
layout of the land in between the stalks, she spies a shadow and
veers to the right to avoid it.
The shadow lunges
to grab her. A long pointed snout, sporting a mouth with rows of
jagged teeth, brushes her leg but fails to find purchase. She dashes
on as the creature gives chase. Acutely aware that they have been
separated, she bends her course to the left. The land rises
slightly, she feels the ground get less muddy underneath her feet.
A cry pierces the air above the noise
of crashing reeds and her laboured breath within the mask. She has
no idea whether it signifies pain or triumph, but she heads towards
it anyway. The reeds thin and she stumbles into the clearing caused
by a rocky outcrop. The change of footing and lack of anything
pushing her back makes her lose her footing, causing her to dive over
one boulder and come to a rest in a heap on a pile of smaller stones.
She scrambles to turn her body to face
her attacker, her hand reaching desperately for the holster. It
comes barrelling after her, cresting the boulder and flinging its
toothed snout towards her, the long, sinuous body arcing through the
air. The jaw closes over the arm she has raised to fend it away from
her face and its weight pins her to the ground. It shakes its head,
jerking her arm viciously, but unable to penetrate the smart material
which has hardened like armour.
A shadow falls over their struggle and
a spear jabs at the creature’s flank, barely marking the smooth,
tough hide, but pushing it hard enough that she is able to slide
partially from under it and get her free hand on the pistol’s grip.
She draws and puts a charge point blank into the animal’s belly.
It spasms and becomes a dead weight.
He helps her roll the creature onto its
side, and she squeezes from beneath it. She stands to inspect her
attacker, its nervous system overloaded by the pistol, it is dying
from being unable to draw breath. It is about as long as her if she
outstretched her arms, the head accounting for a quarter of that.
The snout is narrow and sharp-nosed, for cutting through the reed
forest, the body is barely any wider. The skin is smooth, a rusty
brown striped with purple, and obviously thick enough to repel a
spear thrust. Six beady black eyes, two looking forwards on the head
and the others spaced evenly around the body, give good all round
vision, although she suspects it is short sighted. A single purple
spike with no easily discernible use juts upwards behind its head.
“You are not hurt?” He asks her,
concerned that he has let her come to harm.
“No, Emtaka, my clothes are very
tough.” A quick check reveals that her clothing has done its job,
but she feels a little sore. “How about you?” There is a light
gash on his leg, a thin trickle of blood leaking down his ebony calf.
“Only a scratch,
Shylet.” He falters a little on her name, his language missing the
sound of the leading consonant. “Reed runners, difficult to slay
with a spear, no match for the weapons of the star people, it seems.”
“What happened to the other one?”
She is dismayed that she was forced to kill the beast, always
disappointed at any impact she makes, her wish is only to observe.
But she has been in tight corners before and has never failed to
retaliate when it was necessary.
“I managed to hurt it, they are used
to chasing grazers, they retreat if you fight back.” Emtaka is
only a young man, but she is impressed by his manner of getting along
with his surroundings, of belonging to the landscape in a way she
cannot. He applies some salve to his wound to stop spores from
taking root in his skin.
She climbs onto the tallest rock of the
outcrop, eager to get a good look at their locale, it is the first
time she has been higher than the rushes since they entered the
delta. The rushes stand all around them, spreading as far as she can
see. The tall purple-brown stems are topped by a long, sticky,
streamer-like tongue which waves in the wind and traps the airborne
motes to supplement the plant’s nutrition.
Above the reeds birds jostle and
circle, white wings outstretched to catch the wind as they take their
own share of the bounty from the air. A bird twice the size of the
others glides by and deftly snaps up a smaller compatriot in its
toothed jaw. The sky is heavy with the drifting aerial harvest,
although cloudless, the haze takes the edge off the too bright light
of the sun. The sun itself is a bright disc in the West, painful to
look towards with the naked eye. She is glad of the treatments that
stop the harsh radiation from burning away at her skin, envious of
the extra protection engineered into his body when the planet was
settled.
Looking in their direction of travel,
there is a river, larger than the channels they have waded so far,
the final obstacle on their journey. Trees fill the centre of the
sluggish flow, their branches reaching high above the water
supporting huge purple leaves that track the sun’s progress across
the sky. Beyond the river more reeds and then finally the sea, its
waves glinting in the harsh sunlight.
She uses the magnification on her
glasses and she can see huge masses, bobbing in the water, spewing
motes and spores up into the atmosphere through massive funnels.
This is part of a barely understood life cycle, the motes feed on the
sunlight as they drift inland, there they settle on the ground grow
as plants and animals and slowly make their way back to the sea. The
whole thing seems wasteful to her, but there is an abundance of
energy from the sun, far more the ecosystem her ancestors grew up
from.
Seeing him retrieve some food from his
backpack, she seats herself on the rock and does likewise. She lifts
the dust mask; not a necessity, but advisable, many of his people die
before their time of respiratory problems from inhaling the spores;
and takes an unfiltered sniff of the air. Salts from the sea infuse
the aroma of grass and cinnamon the motes impart. She bites into
unleavened bread from the small circles of off-world wheat the locals
cultivate, and a hard cheese from goats altered to thrive on local
vegetation.
“What is it like to fly between the
stars, Shylet?” He is bolder in his questions than others of his
people, not embarrassed at any holes in his knowledge of things
beyond this wondrous sphere.
“Dull, mostly, there is nothing
between the stars, there is no landscape to traverse, no rivers to
ford, no wildlife to avoid. Its just empty and cold.” Years of
empty and cold, following a trail of mostly forgotten suns to reach
this haven of life far from the reach of civilisation, just to answer
a question.
“Why is it the star people brought my
people here?” She has tried to avoid making comment on their myth
and legends, brought here and left by a race of gods whose chariots
traverse the sky, visiting once every generation or so but never
interfering.
“You were not really brought here,
your ancestors belong to my people. Back then we were fighting a war
against the water people. When we found your home we knew it was a
treasure, but we could not stay to defend it. We changed some of our
people so that they could live here, so that they would become part
of the world and the world would become ours. We did not know that
the water people had done the same.” She shivers slightly, not
with cold, for the suns heat beats down from the sky, but with the
memory of conflict in the unforgiving void, of the impersonal
uncertainty of large-scale death.
“Why did you fight? Are there not
stars enough for all of you?” Unhurried, the sun drifts towards
the horizon and the air begins to attain a yellow tinge.
“I do not know who started it or why
it started, or why it continued for so long. I do not know why we
never talked, or took the time to learn about each other. All I know
it that whenever we met, we fought. Then one day we stopped
attacking them and they stopped attacking us and as long as we stay
away from each other everything is fine.” All she knows is the
aftermath.
His thinks about this for a while in
silence, then picks up his knife and begins hacking at the dead reed
runner. She watches as he peels back the skin and then carves out
chunks of flesh and organs, scooping the hunks into a leather pouch.
The meat of the local fauna is mostly inedible to humankind, so she
considers this action with a frown, although it could have other
uses, she decides it is better that it does not go to waste.
Emboldened by the stillness of the
humans small animals make their presence known in furtive rustles and
half-seen movements. Farther out there is a motion of the reeds that
can not be explained by the wind alone, she puts it down to grazers,
stripping some reeds but leaving others standing so that they do not
expose themselves. The sun begins to set and the sky’s hue
traverses the spectrum from yellow to orange.
Taking note of the sun’s progress, he
stretches and replaces the pack on his back. She follows his lead,
the pack’s now familiar weight pressing her lightly down into the
springy, moist soil. They part the reeds carefully, cautioned by
their recent encounter, but nothing troubles them and nothing moves
except to scurry away.
The sky is aflame with a burning red
glow by the time they reach the river. Repelled by the salt of the
tides, the reeds cease and there is a small, muddy foreshore. In the
shallows she sees the antennae of the vicious crabs that infest these
creeks and make wading across such a hazard, some she has seen have
been longer than her arm.
The trees form a woody barrier along
the middle of the river, as the silt collects in their roots and
threatens to block the channel they migrate slowly upstream to
fresher waters, finally crawling ashore in their adult form, mating
as a forest and then sending their spawn back down the river to the
sea to begin the next generation. She had scoffed when she first
heard such tales of the local lifeforms, but now she had witnessed
the strange blending of plants and animals she realised why the
discoverers of the world had gone to such lengths to make it theirs.
There is a slowly building cacophony of
creaking and splashing as the trees, reacting to the change in light
fold their leaves and pull their branches back beneath the surface of
the river. The crabs shake their antennae at the disturbance, but
remain in their little patches of territory. He strips himself to
the waist and anticipating the delicious cool of the water against
her skin after the long hot day, she does likewise.
Without embarrassment she realises that
he is staring at her body. She thinks back to the women in the
village, but they displayed a casual lack of modesty, so he must have
seen the female form often enough before. Then it dawns on her that
it is the spiralling whorls of scar tissue that pattern her coppery
skin, something that she could have had repaired away, but kept as a
memorial and reminder.
“Shylet, are all the star people so
decorated?” He asks, tearing his eyes away and fishing around in
his pack for something.
“No, I was hurt fighting against the
water people.” She think of the names used for their adversaries,
nothing is as simple or neutral as ‘water people’, nothing that
acknowledges them as people at all.
He retrieves flotation balloons made
from the innards of some beast, inflates them and hands a couple to
her, to tie onto her pack.
“Did you come here for revenge?”
For the first time he seems unsure about her.
“No, Emtaka. Not revenge,
understanding.” He seems happy with this.
Taking out the pouch of meat cut
earlier from the reed runner, he begins to cast flesh into the water.
Immediately the crabs sense the feast and converge, snapping at each
other with their quarter of powerful pincers. Other shapes swim in,
eager for their share.
“Come, now, before something big
smells a meal.” The water starts to froth over with the excitement
of the creatures within, he walks upstream of this and wades into the
river.
The cool embrace of the water slides
sensually up her legs, quickly coming above her waist. A few more
steps and it touches her breasts, the current sliding past her skin
like a gentle lover. She pushes the pack before her and swims with a
languid motion, taking care to disturb the surface as little as
possible, unwilling to attract attention. The rigours of the day
wash away and she smiles to herself, suddenly feeling part of this
strange ecology, until a splash from behind her reminds her how close
she is to the river’s less than friendly denizens.
At the river’s centre she climbs up
beside him on the rough, submerged branch of a tree and balances
knee-deep in the water. He casts more meat from the pouch, throwing
it with a smooth motion into the shallows to excite the crabs. They
swim on, taking a course to reach shore a distance upstream of the
frenzy. Her foot touches the river bed and she wades carefully
ashore until something touches her ankle and she splashes the last
few steps in a panic reaction. The fading light of the sun
illuminates a rare smile on his face.
The air is losing its heat, they
redress in silence against the chill as the sun dips below the
horizon. With a sucking, dripping commotion the trees raise their
night branches, tall spikes topped with long fronds and a gently
glowing bulb. The first moths of the evening emerge from between the
tree roots, climb these stems and wait on the drooping fronds, drying
their wings and long white tails.
He leads them back into the rushes, her
glasses adapt to the near darkness, but she can see no further than
before. Around them many small things raise voices in a chirping
song, quieting as they approach and then rejoining the chorus as they
pass. The clouds of spores above them blot out any stars and lend
the night a close, oppressive air.
They burst out onto the beach, a gentle
slope of fine, soft sand. He prods the ground before him with his
spear, probing for buried creatures in their path. A bonfire of
driftwood has already been built on the beach, she suspects after the
last full moon, they will rebuild it in the light of the morning. He
shakes a large log, disturbing small shapes creatures which scurry
away into the night and then sets about lighting it with flint, steel
and kindling.
Staring out to east, across the sea,
she waits with slight apprehension, watching the moon make its way
above the horizon. Out in the water there is movement as one large
shape sinks below the waves and is replaced by another, the newcomer
extends funnels and blows a fresh cloud of organic matter into the
onshore breeze. The fire splutters into life, a low, rosy glow. She
sits at the offered place beside him, not needing the warmth, her
clothes can provide ample, but glad of this little island of human
life. Now and then she glances back out to sea, and at the full moon
playing on the water.
“They will come when they come.”
He says and she tries to will herself some patience.
The fire climbs higher, motes are
highlighted by its light and then sent swirling in the updraught,
like an inverse orange snowfall. She relaxes watching the primal
beauty of the flames, some ancient part of her brain soothed by the
flickering dance of burning wood. Out in the sea a new noise catches
her attention and she turns he head towards it.
Trudging from the water are five dark
shapes, her glasses instantly blank out the light of the fire and
enhance the details. They balance on their long, flat swimming tails
and short lower manipulative arms, which makes their progress on land
slow and waddling. The long middle arms hold spears, probing at the
sand before them and helping with balance. Wide flippers are held
out for balance and the short upper arms folded up close to their
sizeable jaws. Their backs are armoured, lending them the appearance
of a giant isopod or maybe an old Earth armadillo crossed with a
turtle. Eight eyes tuned to a variety of different wavelengths top a
small, pointed head.
Suddenly she is back aboard the Thomas
Stanley's Decision. Her crew lie dead or dying, the
counter-agent she has injected chases the viral weapon around inside
her own body, spreading agonies as they go. Through the ragged
opening of the hull breach advance the suited alien figures of the
enemy, the Roaches, torching the bodies of those dead or not quite as
they go. She struggles to breathe, her suit’s contamination alarm
flashing its warning, and then her lungs open up and she coughs the
command to rearm the automatic defences. The intruders start to fall
under her retaliation, something grabs her hand.
She looks down at her wrist, he is
holding her arm away from her pistol. She slows her rapid breathing
and relaxes her tensed muscles.
“Sorry, an old memory I thought I was
over.” She tells him. He lets go but keeps a wary eye on her.
The newcomers take their places around
the fire, making gestures of welcome with the tiny, baby-like hands
of their upper manipulative limbs. They are semi-aquatic, able to
breathe both above and below the surface of the water, although
ponderous on two limbs they are quick on four and rapid swimmers.
Sat down they are less threatening, and if she concentrates on their
hands and not on their jaws, somewhat comic.
Trade is quick, the bronze spearheads
and tool that have been weighting down their packs are passed over
along with foodstuffs and curios from inland, medicines and dried
fish are passed back. There is no haggling, no discussion on quality
or price, no measuring. Gratitude is expressed with hand gestures,
there being no common way of expressing language between the two
species. He hands a bone carved with a complex design of lines and
inlayed with wood to the nearest of the sea people and in return
receives a large fang, tipped with a crystal and carved with a
pattern of circles.
“What is that?” Her curiosity is
piqued.
“A totem,” he replies, seeming a
little embarrassed. “If you love another person, then you can make
a totem and trade it with the sea people. If they trade you a totem
in return then you can give that to the person and they will return
your love. I do not know what the sea people do with the totems we
give them.”
“They probably have the same
tradition,” she laughs. Their visitors look up at the sound,
making a variety of hand signals, but do not seem alarmed.
“Maybe so,” he says, thoughtful.
“Shylet, why did you come to our home? There must be many stars to
choose from.” She thinks of the myriad of stars visible from the
mountains above his home where she had been shown the the buds that
grow from the airborne spores and how to harvest the edible parts.
“In all the sky, whenever humans and
the sea people meet, they fight, so we stay away from each other.
Here is the only place where when we meet, we share a fire. I came
here to find out why, Emtaka.” Some people spoke of a renewed push
against the Roaches, some of careful avoidance, others lamented the
lack of communication, she had kept quiet and gone seeking answers.
“That is easy. I do not know about
what lives between the stars, but here everything that is not us
tries to hurt us in its own way. We need to trade to survive, we do
not need more enemies, why would we fight each other?”
Here was her answer, humanity craving
an enemy, lest it turned upon itself, maybe the sea people were the
same. As if to illustrate the point, a stray moth lurches overhead,
perhaps drawn by the light, human and alien alike duck to avoid the
touch of its tail. One of the sea people strikes it with a bold
flipper, sending it tumbling into the fire, and then inspects the
small wound this touch has caused. The group applaud this action
together. She leans back, enjoying the easy, if wordless
camaraderie.
“Shylet,” he says eventually.
“Would you take me to the stars?” Suddenly she has an uneasy
inkling of whom the totem is for.
