Still Human- Planet G

by Jerry Underhill

  They moved on in silence for a while, the soft sounds of the water somehow contributing to the quiet. The world felt larger on the water. It felt larger knowing there was a third alien intelligence.

  “Current is really picking up.” Tarma said after an hour of pushing upriver.

  Huston nodded. It wasn’t bad enough to walk yet, but he wondered whether the heat of the day had sent snowmelt their way.

  The water beneath them was still dark with organic material, though he could see a little further into its heart, where grass swayed as it reached for sun from the floor. It was a funny contrast: the fear he felt here from being able to see the vibrancy of the ecosystem under him compared to the senses-tingling defensiveness he’d felt looking blindly down at the black, hidden world in the swamp.

  He looked at the submerged trunk of a cypress ahead. He may have been looking at the foot of an enormous dinosaur as it surged well over 75 feet above. Nature sometimes offered glimpses of man’s place within the scale of its power.

  It was a serene scene, watching the forest sprinkle dead leaves around them as the brisk wind brushed their bodies and sent waves through the staggering, swaying trees. The rapidly quickening current did nothing to the serenity, but their bodies were beginning to feel the effect by lunchtime.

  Paddling around a large boulder in the center of the river, Huston was opening his mouth to suggest walking the rest of the distance when the parting of brief cloud cover brought his eye back to the boulder.

  “Hey,” he called back to the others, running his hand along its grooved surface. Submerging his arm, he felt more certain. “This has been carved!”

  He quickly paddled to the shore and pulled the front of his canoe onto the soil.Taking off his shirt and shoes, he waded into the water and dove in as the others caught up. It was far deeper than he’d thought in the center of the river. And freezing. He swam to the boulder and plunged down. The water was clear enough for him to make out details he couldn’t see from above. His hand followed it's bulbous side down to where the modifications ended and the rock resumed its natural condition. The river was maybe 20 feet deep where he was. Pushing himself away from the statue, he took a full view before emerging with a splash and grabbing the side of Kit’s canoe.

  “It's a statue of a fish.” He said, grinning through chattering teeth. “It's a huge statue of a fish.”

  Kit excitedly smiled back and roughly paddled to shore. Huston let go of her canoe to splash back against the boulder. Tarma and Cooper were paddling to remain in place against the current, circling the boulder to catch angles through the sun’s reflection. Looking back, the minister saw Kit pull her own boat ashore and begin taking off her shoes and shirt to join him. Leaving her quick-dry undershirt on, she jumped in after him, swimming over to the boulder to hold in place alongside Huston. Their arms touched, causing Huston to turn his face to hide the small smile he was sure had betrayed him.

  Hoping he hadn’t turned pinker than the water’s chill had already painted him, he turned back to her and raised his eyebrows before re-submerging. She followed him. Tarma and Coop did so as well. Cooper tied a rope to a tree and swam it out to wrap it around the statue, which they were soon thankful for as their arms and legs got tired and the adrenaline of the moment faded.

  Huston and Kit were the last to return to the boats and change into drier clothes.

  “I need to bring an underwater camera back.” Tarma said, hugging himself against the lingering cold.

  “Let’s get to some sun.” Huston replied, nodding in agreement to Tarma before turning to Cooper’s expertise. “You open to walking from here?”

  “Yeah.We should.” He responded, wrapping his rope to hang off his pack and shouldering his weapons.

  Huston quickly took stock of the supplies he’d brought from the Fisherman Village. He hadn’t expected the current to compel hiking so quickly, but he realized he should have.

  Grabbing a spear to use as a hiking stick, he smiled to Kit and Tarma. They smiled back and followed Cooper into the woods. Kit stopped as she passed Huston to jump up and down excitedly, holding his arm.

  “So cool!” She said, looking back at the top of the statue. It was further underwater than when they’d initially stopped.

  Huston happily wrapped her in a one armed hug. Locking eyes with her as he let go.

  She continued walking. Huston took a longer look back and then followed behind her. That was a lot of snowmelt. He wondered how exposed it would be in the heart of winter, or how far underwater it’d be in a month.

  They continued walking for another hour, having decided to hike themselves warm again. Coop alternated between leading and following the group, depending on the terrain and their lines of sight, though they were mostly able to trek close to the river bank as it scoured it's way through the valley. Kit and Tarma were each busy in their notebooks, which Huston found lovable and Cooper, by the look on his face, considered unwise. Tarma had been the second person Huston had bonded with at the training facility. One of those soulful friendships that never felt small or new. Kit had been the first.

  Coop held his hand up at the front of the group. He was pointing his microwave rifle at something the others couldn’t see across the water upriver. Huston walked carefully to his side.

  “What do you see?” He whispered.

  “Maybe some of the cave ones.” Coop responded, his voice barely audible.

  Huston struggled to look across the bright green leaves of trees and waist high grasses lining the banks. He lifted Cooper’s assault rifle from where it hung and lifted the scope to his eye, noting that Tarma and Kit were doing the same with the camera’s zoom feature.

  Finally, Cooper dropped the barrel and released his posture.

  “Might’ve been.” He said, looking at Huston. “You see anything?”

  “No.” Huston let the rifle fall back to hang at Cooper’s side.

  “I’ve talked to Knux and Scott about them. What’s your impression?” Tarma asked, coming to stand next to them while still watching the other side of the river.

  Huston looked at Tarma and then Kit.

  “I’m afraid of them, but not for any reason I can identify.” He admitted after a moment’s thought. “They’re highly organized and from their cave art, capable of symbolic expression. I think they’re smart.”

  “Is it because of the violence? Their appearance?” Tarma prodded.

  “That’s part of it. It’s also the experience of being in their caves, losing sense of the bubble of your own narrative, your reality, as a species, as a group, as a person...More than the Clouds, in this sense, it felt like meeting an alien civilization on its terms, which I think is a natural thing to feel uncomfortable with.”

  “From the skeletons Julie was able to study, she thinks they have exteriors, organs, and nervous systems that would be vulnerable to kinetic weapons. You see anything suggesting otherwise?” Cooper asked after a short silence.

  “Yeah, i’d say they can be killed. They’re incredibly strong though, and dexterous, and I don’t know how strong that chitin is, so I don’t know what it would take or how easy it would be to lock on in the dark of their tunnels.”

  “Poppa isn’t out here for the dark tunnels.” Tarma said.

  “Do you think they’re the ones who attacked the Fisherman Village?” Kit asked.

  “I don’t know. Could be the Clouds. Could be something else. Could be environmental pressures contributing to internal conflict. Regardless, they wouldn’t be the first people in history to disappear without a trace.” Huston answered as he began walking again.

  “I’d be careful thinking of them as people.” Cooper said gently.

  “Think of ‘em as anything else and we could end up slaughtering them.” The minister cautioned.

  “Then again,” Kit began, picking her way under a low hanging set of branches. “De-vilification of animal predators, like sharks, for example, actually aids conservation efforts. Thinking of them as s
omething less than whatever we are calling the threshold for people might help some rationalize and excuse what would then be considered instinctive behavior.”

  “Especially if they can be killed fairly easily, which so far seems to be the case for both the Cavers and the Clouds.” Cooper added.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Day 24: Night

  Cooper, Tarma, and Kit joined me at the village and we made our way upriver after some time exploring. We made good progress despite the current forcing us to land early on. After stopping at the pool I’d already been to and showing them the giant mammal den, or nest, Kit isn’t quite sure either, it was a short walk to the Treetop Village- where we will camp for the night and begin our search for the Clouds.

  We’d found a giant algae slicked statue a few miles downriver from the pond. My best guess is that the Fisherman associate the fish that they subsist on with something divine. If they thrive on the productivity of this river, I’d guess that the fish that fill it spawn at its mouth. Whereas the pool had been fed by a waterfall before, the heat of the last few days had turned it into a roaring, demonous spout. That makes the placement of the fish statue doubly interesting; the people who lived here chose to honor the location where the climb to untenable currents began, as opposed to the spawning point itself.

  Also interesting, the drenched rock faces ringing the pool were bespeckled with an algae that curiously reflected the light- the way a prism might. It’s possible there are some odd metals pouring from the spring here. Or that the algae itself is bioluminescent. I’d love to see it at night to know for sure.

  Cooper thought we were being followed by Cavers a few times along the way, though we never saw anything. I think Scott’s right to trust him with weapons out here. I know I do. And so far, he’s only indicated a willingness to raise the non-lethal rifle, and hasn’t actually fired. This is going to be the most crucial aspect of our presence out here.

  They spent most of the trek asking me questions about the Clouds and Cavers. They’d already been informed by Scott’s public briefings, but were excited to discuss some of the less tangible elements of my experiences. Or at least Tarma and Kit were.

  The Village is empty, as it was the last time I was here, and there’s no sign from the fire or vegetation that any substantially large group has been here since. I showed them the shimmery markings on the trees. They’ve subsided but are plenty distinct against the darkened brown of the trunks.

  Cooper and I climbed the trees to drop down some ropes. We are going to stay up top tonight.

  “All shoulders.”

  Huston looked up at the voice. Cooper was watching Tarma dance out of the corner of his eye.

  “Yeah.” Huston agreed, watching Tarma and wondering how long it’d take for Cooper to regret saying he could play his music out loud. Tarma didn’t need to dance so close to the man, though. And he wasn’t all shoulders. He was all shoulder. Huston supposed he might’ve suffered an injury in the past. “He must have been glorious in his time.”

  Cooper raised a brow, but said nothing.

  It was weird to be back at village with them. Sharing it made it more real. It was smart of Cooper to want to make noise. They weren’t skulking, and it’d do nothing for their efforts to make it seem that way. Besides, Spring had made its first forceful appearances and predators would follow.

  “Did you ask for this?” Kit asked, frowning at Tarma.

  Huston laughed. More than once back at the facility and he few times on the ship, he had. “I’m a man of God. I flow.”

  Cooper spat a mouthful of seeds at a particularly aggressive shoulder pump.

  “Why’s his mouth so open when he dances?” Kit asked aloud. “What’s he looking at?”

  Before Huston could answer, Cooper grabbed his microwave rifle from the log next to him and pointed it at a dense grouping of bushes.

  He’d been doing that. Seconds later, tiny birds bounced out and set aflight.

  “Hey, priest, calm your friend down.” Tarma barked.

  Huston reached to slap Tarma’s rear and yank the bottle from his hand. Swigging a mouthful and shutting his eyes as the poison burned into his gut, he stood, handed it back, and walked away from the fire.

  The shimmers weren’t far, though they were out of sight from the group. He lifted his light. Tiny spiders crawled from where it struck the nearest tree. The night was still and chilled, but warm enough for the nocturnal songs of a hundred unnamed insects.

  Crunching through a mixture of dead leaves and budding growth, he stuck his hand out to rest his fingers at the edge of a shimmer. It could’ve been a hallucination, as he’d told the others, but that’s not what he really believed. He didn’t know what he believed, other than that he was capable of touching the shimmer a thousand times if that’s what it took to understand it. Smiling, he planted his palm against it and closed his eyes.

  His eyes jolted awake. He darted his eyes around him.

  “Easy.” A soft, comforting voice whispered close to his ear.

  “What?”

  “Are you ok?” She continued. “What happened?”

  “Never known a little poison to keep you culty types down.” Tarma said from somewhere to his left.

  “Poison?” Huston asked, still confused. The faces and voices he recognized at once, but where and why they were was only just then dawning.

  “We found you over by those shimmering spots you showed us. Did you touch them again?” Kit asked.

  “Yeah.” Huston looked around more slowly now. He was lifted onto an elbow on the ground near the fire. He’d woken with his head on Kit’s lap.

  “He’s up?” Cooper asked, crunching through some bushes from somewhere in the darkness around them. He crouched next to Huston and looked intensely into his eyes, then checked his heartbeat on his neck. “Feeling alright?”

  “Yeah. What happened?”

  “You took a single sip of my Jesus juice and ran out of here naked. It was hot.” Tarma said.

  “You walked off and Tarma found you a few minutes later when he went to see where you’d gone.” Kit cut in gently. “Cooper was making a frame in case we needed to carry you back.”

  “I’m sorry.” Huston said, embarrassed. “Yeah, I touched it.”

  He tried to remember what had happened next. Flashes of something were coming back, but they may have been dreams from another time. It was impossible to place them and frustratingly out of his grasp. He felt pretty sure he’d seen a Cloud. Possibly the same one from the first time he’d touched it. And a sense of movement, like he was riding a wave, rippling off of the bank at the Cloud’s feet and sliding back to the center of some lake. But the lake wasn’t water. It was grass...He didn’t know. Whatever had come back to him in the moment had slipped through his fingers again.

  “I’m ok.” He finally said, looking at the serious expressions on the others’ faces. “You don’t need to carry me back.”

  “We’ll see. I’ll get more water. Let’s let the nano take a crack at it and we’ll monitor you.” Cooper said sternly. “Hell of a lot of spiders over there. You get bit?”

  “No, I don’t think so. Just hallucinated again. Maybe I passed out last time, too.”

  “Have some bites. I’ll be back. Tarma.”

  Tarma looked up in time to frown at Cooper’s raised eyebrows. Standing up, he took the microwave rifle from Cooper and listened to some hurried words before turning back.

  Huston watched Cooper walk quickly away.

  Smiling to Huston, Tarma sat facing them, looking into the woods behind Kit. Huston stood slowly. He felt too embarrassed to keep laying down. His body felt fine. He tried to assure Kit’s worried eyes with a reassuring smile of his own. She reached her hand to hold his and pulled gently down. He listened. Sitting, he laid his head back down. Though this time he used his pack. She softly put her hand on his shoulder.

  “Maybe one of you should touch it.” He said jokingly. “Apparently I can’t handle it.”

>   “I did.”

  Huston looked at Tarma in surprise.

  “Obviously I did.” He restated.

  “You see anything?” Huston asked, excited to know.

  “He didn’t touch it.” Kit said, standing up and putting another log into the fire.

  “No, I really did. I didn’t feel anything. Didn’t see anything. Thought I’d get high.”

  “You’re serious?” Huston asked, frowning.

  He nodded.

  “What did you see?” Kit asked Huston, sitting back down.

  He paused for a long minute.

  “A Cloud. I think I’ve seen Komorebi both times.” He explained the vision and the Cloud leader the best he could. The others listened intently.

  They didn’t say much else for a while. It was enough to watch the light from the flames flicker off each other’s faces, sprinkling off the trunks and leaves encircling them. Kit sat closer to Huston than normal. Cooper returned shortly, assigning Huston about a gallon of water after he’d sterilized it. Eventually they climbed into the canopy. Huston went after Tarma and Kit, happy to show Cooper that he was ok.

  He couldn’t help but think again about the curious difference in Cloud abilities. Some had needed the stairs.

  He wondered again where the kids and elderly might be.

  Chapter Sixteen

  They woke early the next day. Huston still felt embarrassed. The others graciously stopped him from any further apologies after his third try. If anything, they seemed more keen to ask him about the Clouds. It was as if his mysterious experience with the shimmer was an extension of the Clouds’ mystical other-worldliness, with him a window to them. It was a mindset his role as minister may have conditioned them to.

  Continuing on the plan Huston and Cooper had first discussed, they hiked northeast, following a ridge that carried them over and beyond the Fisherman valley and into a second tier of much higher peaks. The ridge was exposed, but the day was sunny and the breeze refreshing. The ground around them was waving with the wind; the knee high grasses of the bald ridge soft and thick enough to sleep comfortably on.