It feels as if, by holding her tight, he is resolved to fend off their growing thirst and waning vitality. And so defeat the grim shadow that stalks them both.
Locked in one another’s arms, the couple quickly sink into the black depth surrounding them.
Noah awakens in the middle of an hallucination. The certain effect of severe hydration.
In it, his sleeping mate is breathing soft sighs of contentment nestled in his strong arms and the cave is awash in soft light. As he is struggling to hold the pleasant moment, Davina stirs, opens her eyes and sits bolt upright.
“Noah,” she declares, “we are near the end of the tunnel! Look ahead. You can see the brighter light that beckons us.”
With that, the couple rise as one and proceed as quickly as fatigue allows toward the brightening end of the tunnel. Which opens out onto . . .
A vivid red world of stark immensity, its vermilion surfaces stretching upward beyond the limit of their far vision!
Thick stands of greenery occupy wide stretches of ground. Sheer vertical walls pucker with the black mouths of many caves.
And dotting the level floor are bright yellow-capped mesas. Rising like fountains of stone above a ruddy ocean.
It is the great rift valley, and . . .
There is a nearby wash of clear, sweet water siphoning off the valley’s sheer walls. Bleeding into its solid red-ocher floor.
Chapter 46. Valley of the Chimeras
Stepping out onto the vast floor of the great valley, Davina pauses. Taking in every stark detail of a geologic wonder that beggars her imagination.
“This is the great rift valley you have told me so many tales about,” she acknowledges to her mate.
“But like the dreams your descriptions stirred in me, they fall woefully short of the vision before us. It is a place of majesty and enchantment. A place that seems to go on forever and fills my curious eyes with wonder and awe!”
But Noah does not hear his mate’s words; he is greedily drinking from the pooling water at the base of the cliff near the tunnel’s mouth. He waves her over to the shallow wash, and she slowly sips from it until her thirst, too, is slaked.
Taking stock of the bizarre landscape surrounding them, Noah confesses:
“This terrain is unfamiliar to me. We are in a very different part of the great valley from where I crossed it before.
“Here, there are trees—a virtual forest of them—and yellow-topped mesas whose flora I do not recognize. This part of the great valley floor is unlike the sere, lifeless, compact clay-like expanse I encountered earlier.
“Even the valley’s walls are different,” he adds, casting his eyes upward. “These are pocked with many cave-like recesses, hidden in shadow and perched upon ledge-like outcroppings running across the walls like the steps of giants.”
Reminded of the pueblo cities of stone perched on the canyon walls by ancient peoples of the American west, Noah is struck by the dramatic contrast with the valley he crossed earlier.
“At my first crossing,” he continues, “the valley’s walls were smooth, seamless, featureless.
“The ledge-perched shadows frowning down on us from these valley walls are not lifeless. Even from this angle and distance, the rocky outcroppings cannot conceal the green tendrils that creep out from the shadows and cling to the surrounding stone. They look spidery in their random, vein-like patterns. I wonder what manner of plant grows thus.”
Ever the adventurer, Davina turns to her mate and, with a wide and knowing smile, replies:
“Fate has guided us to this interesting place, and I am anxious to know it better. To drink in its grandeur. To taste it. To feel it.
“This is one more opportunity for us to explore a strange new terrain, to probe its wonders and to understand its connections to the wider world we cross.”
Chuckling at her excitement, Noah adds:
“You, Davina, are a wonder yourself. Your hunger for mastering new frontiers, your unquenchable thirst for new knowledge. They are what I love most about you. And I share your passion.
“But, as my people say, ‘heaven can wait’, for we must first find food if we are to have the energy to explore this wide, deep valley.”
As if on cue, a small rabbit-like creatures erupts from a thicket of bushes between the mouth of the tunnel and the nearby wash. It makes a dash on long, quick legs for the safety of the tunnel. This creature is not only swift; its small size makes it a difficult target indeed.
But it is not quick or small enough as Davina’s lance drives through its beating heart. Steeped in the art of spearing quick-finned fish from the shoreline near her crystal-spired city, she is more than a match for even the fleetest land-dwelling creature.
On closer inspection, this creature turns out not to be a rabbit at all. If anything, it more closely resembles the ground-squirrel of Noah’s world. But with a bobtail, elongated hind-legs and, most oddly of all, the face and ears of a vampire bat.
Noah is struck by how peculiar and diminutive the creature is. More like a large mouse than a small rabbit in his world. He will soon learn all the fauna in this valley are chimeras. And all are dwarfs.
But the flesh is soft and sweet, and the couple relish their first meal in memory of a warm-blooded creature. The famished couple make quick work of the bush-rabbit. Savoring the blood-gorged flesh. Grateful for the nutritious, energy-packed protein it provides.
Withdrawing once more into the safety of the tunnel, they curl up together and soon are in the deep slumber of contentment.
They will need all their energy for the mortal threat both will face on the morrow!
Rising refreshed and hopeful, the couple pause only long enough to drink from the nearby wash before venturing forth toward the greenwood at the center of the valley floor.
That is when they encounter the capricious nature of dead reckoning in the valley where, like everything else about this place, distance is not what it seems.
A full day’s trek brings them no closer to the forest, and they are forced to find a sheltered place to spend the night. As it happens, they arrive at a cairn-like formation of rocks amid thick, high grasses as fatigue is overcoming them.
Noah carefully inspects the interior spaces of the cairn before assuring his mate there is a large pocket whose surrounding stones are solid and seamless. As closely packed as a work of masonry. There is but one entrance, and this he closes by stacking loose boulders to seal its opening.
Their precautions complete, the couple are soon asleep, nestled in their arms, one with the other.
The darkness is total when Noah is awakened by a soft, muted hissing and faint scratching sound. Quietly approaching the walled entrance of their shelter, he discerns two distinct hissing sounds and what seem to be several faint scratching noises in unison. Returning to his mate, he shakes her gently while clasping his open palm across her mouth for silence.
They creep noiselessly to the entrance and, together, listen intently.
“I make at least two hissing creatures,” Noah whispers, “and there seem to be many clawed limbs at work. It may be few many-limbed creatures, or it may be many few-limbed creatures only two of which are hissing. Perhaps, urging others to work faster.
“In either case, they seem intent on reopening the entrance. I have been listening for some time while you rested, and I have yet to see a boulder move. That is why I waited until I was sure before disturbing you.
“Unless these creatures make progress toward removing the barrier, I think it is safest for us to remain here through the night. Then, let us see what the morning brings when the light of two suns returns.”
The couple spend a harrowing night listening to the hissed murmuring and faint scratching of unknown assailants striving to reach them. But as the rays of a new dawn invade the cairn, silence returns.
Lances at the ready, the couple warily remove the stack of boulders and emerge back onto the valley floor.
“Look!” Davina cries, as she knee
ls to inspect the ground next to the cairn. “You were right. Here are the prints of two creatures, each possessing many clawed appendages.
“Judging by the spacing between the foremost and hindmost claw-marks, each is fully as long as we are tall. Fortunate for us, their strength was not equal to their length, for they were too weak to remove the boulders.
“Still, the eerie hissing may be a sign they are venomous and, thus, to be avoided in the open where they may reach us.”
Little do they suspect the full truth of her surmise.
For this is a valley of chimeras!
And they have just averted the poisonous fangs of its apex predator. A titan in a world of preternaturally small creatures. A monster combining the body of the serpents they encountered in their escape from the heliotrope forest and the short, clawed limbs of the creatures that feasted upon the terror birds’ chicks.
Every life-form in the unique ecosystem that thrives in this part of the Great Rift Valley is a chimera. Nature’s cut-and-paste creations of hybrid creatures that are a cross between the pure species that dwell upon the planet’s surface far above.
It is nature’s grand experiment gone awry. Embracing all life-forms in this eternal valley. Plant and animal alike.
While fire consumed the land-dwelling creatures on the surface of the planet, the rising heat could not find its way down into this deepest place of the world. Sparing the odd creatures below from the mass extinctions suffered by so many of the surface-dwellers whose multiple forms they mimic.
Safely removed from the darwinian struggles required of surface life, the life-forms here did not have to adapt. Thus retaining and passing on inherited weaknesses that would have doomed them in competition with the pure species evolving far above them.
The result is a menagerie of monsters and a garden of freakish plants!
The very origins of all life on the planet. Frozen in time.
Surviving unnoticed by the adaptive, shape-shifting life-forms that flourished until they were extinguished by the holocaust that consumed life on the lands between the cloud-covered polar regions. Untouched still by the contemporaneous life-forms that now populate the surface between the far ends of that separate world.
The Great Rift Valley is home to wolf-headed aurochs, crocodilians staring through the lidless eyes of frog-heads, mongooses flicking the forked tongues of spade-headed vipers.
As if to equalize the exchange in some grim bargain, every hybrid form has its reciprocal, reverse image: dire wolves with ungulate heads, fat frog bodies supporting the spike-toothed jaws of the crocodile, sinuous snakes with the heads of mongooses.
The same crazy-quilt pattern is evidenced in the valley’s plant-life.
Huge blossoms festoon the trunks of trees where they sustain an aerophyte existence. While mosses, lichens and other forms of fungus adorn the stems of branches and stalks of reeds alike.
In fact, the greenwood the couple admired from afar is, upon close inspection, neither green nor wood.
It is a profusion of vertical columns of symmetrically stacked discs, with great tufts of grass sprouting from their crowns. The scurfy leaves and the trunks formed by the outer surface of the discs all have a scaly, reptilian skin. The blossoms on the trunks are earth-tones of brown, black and grey.
Appearing as normal trees from afar, the vertical columns have a sinister, lepidote aspect when viewed close at hand.
Noah is unsettled by the weird, unnatural forms of plants and land-animals in this valley, while his mate takes the whole fantastic scene in stride. This truly is a place the platypus of his world could call home and, recalling every discordant detail of its jigsaw physiology, Noah wonders if they will find any here.
Due to the isolated existence of her polar colony, every plant and every animal they have encountered on their journey has been strange and new in Davina’s experience. She simply lacks the familiarity with “normal” life-forms that has framed her mate’s repugnance toward the mutant varieties they encounter here.
Had he been less appalled and more open to new possibilities, Noah would recall examples from his own world of unique and weird creatures evolving in ecosystems isolated from outside influence. However weird and repulsive to his own preconceptions of what is natural, the chimera life-forms in this valley are no different in causation from those he observed as a university student on field trips to the Galapagos off Ecuador and to remote archipelagos in the South Pacific.
On a practical level, he wonders how he and his mate will find food in a place where familiar fruits and edibles do not grow. He is musing over this very question when Davina calls out to him from a nearby stream she has been inspecting.
“Look, Noah,” she exclaims, “at least we will not starve in this valley. For these are the very fish we have eaten so often on our journey here.” Seeing these familiar creatures, Noah breathes a sigh of relief.
Instead of proceeding with all deliberate speed, the couple spend many days and nights in this land of chimeras. There are fish and water in abundance. And many cairn-like formations in which to shelter.
While they are vigilant to danger, the mystery of the strange chimera life-forms pulls irresistibly on their scientific curiosity.
Collaborating on their observations, a picture begins to emerge that is as improbable as it is inescapable!
If the evidence weren’t so compelling, Noah for his part would reject it out of hand. For it turns Charles Darwin and all Noah’s experience and understanding of evolutionary biology on their heads.
The emerging picture is only a theory, he reassures himself. Still, all the evidence points to it. And nowhere else!
It is the story of the origin of species on this planet.
In the beginning, life on this distant moon was strongly influenced by the harsh UV rays of two suns. Its early atmosphere was very different from today, and it did not shield the earliest organisms from constant mutation.
Single-cell organisms and their more complex, multi-cellular descendants became even less anchored and developed into a riot of “free” forms as mutation deprived them of stability and uniformity over time.
The primordial soup on this planet contained and nurtured an infinite diversity of unique, ever-changing life-forms. The more complex organisms became, the more the stampede of mutation intensified.
In this valley, nature did not play favorites. Every variation of life, however improbable and fragile, was given a chance. Many survived and are well represented by the chimeras occupying the valley today.
But not all life was contained in this deepest place in the world.
Some life-forms escaped the valley and made their way to the surface above. And that is when the great engine of evolutionary biology on this planet kicked in:
The differentiation of species.
The chimera life-forms began to adapt to the more hostile conditions on the planet’s surface. But not in the way life adapted on Noah’s earth.
Here, nature endowed the chimeras with the singular power of differentiation. Instead of the incremental, subtle, piecemeal changes that powered the evolution of life on earth, the changes here were dramatic and total. Take the wolf-headed aurochs:
The chimera that made its way to the surface encountered great difficulty finding food. While its head contained everything needed to be a successful carnivore, it was hobbled by a body that precluded stealth and was not nimble enough to run down prey. Almost overnight, it differentiated itself into:
An ungulate, with an inexhaustible larder of prairie grasses, and
A fleet-footed canine, capable of running down the swiftest prey for the fang-lined jaws in its carnivore head.
The one became two and, unlike the one, both were able to survive the more challenging conditions on the planet’s surface.
The results of differentiation into surface species were spectacular.
So successful were these new life-forms they very nearly wiped out the plants and indigenous animals of t
he surface.
That is when nature devised a revolutionary and ingenious way to restore and ensure balance in the world.
That is when every differentiated life-form, made desperate by the near disappearance of the variety of prey on its menu, began to specialize.
That is when predators limited their efforts to the most populous and nutritious prey.
That is when this planet’s singular predator-prey relationships were established.
As each species of apex predator confined itself to one prey only, the numbers of prey animals and plants alike exploded. And this great web of exclusive predator-prey relationships is what sustains all species in natural balance in the world above this deepest of land-locked valleys.
As remarkable as the chimera life-forms are, they are not the greatest wonder in this timeless valley.
That is a mystery that will be revealed to the travelers on the morrow.
And it will challenge everything they thought they knew about the creation of humanoid life!
Chapter 47. The Ledge-Builders
After many days studying the weird plants and animals in this part of the Great Rift Valley, Davina advises Noah they must find a way out.
“My purpose is not here,” she tells her mate, “and I am loath to spend more time in pursuits that prevent me from achieving it.
“While I cannot expect you to possess the same sense of urgency, I can tell you it is your purpose, too, and we must resume our journey across the world above us.”
She makes this declaration just as the light of two suns crests the valley’s far rim. Turning everything around them into a splendor of brilliant colors and shadows that bleed downward from the rocky outcrops mottling the sheer valley wall.
Looking upward, Noah’s eyes are attracted to the rainbow-like halos of light limning the outer edges of the protruding rocks.
Presuming the rocky outcrops to be naturally formed geologic formations, he wonders if they offer a way out and onto the roof of the valley.
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