Space for Evolution

by Zurab Andguladze

  “Bame, look what you have done,” Bef hailed him. “What are you thinking about, if you’ve even lost our crop?”

  The young man flinched, looked around and saw the pods scattered under his feet. He bent down, picked them up, threw them into the basket and said, “Why should we guess? Why did not they explain this question as clearly as all the others?”

  Meanwhile, they had already reached the end of their rows. Here, on the edge of the field, before returning and proceeding to collect beans in the next row, they unloaded their harvest into large baskets also woven from switches. Exactly the same containers awaited them on the opposite side of the garden.

  “We appear to be unable to solve this problem even all together. What is the point of talking about it now? Are not we waiting for the opening of some files after our pairings?” Pamo glanced at his row. “It seems this conversation already distracts us.”

  At noon, the harvest collectors left the plantation. They gathered in the shade of a forest adjacent to the farm. The young people took food from another wicker basket, which had been hanging on a branch of a tall plant. In the morning, all three had decided that they wouldn’t return to the settlement for lunch, and wouldn’t waste time in vain going on the two kilometer round trip.

  While they quenched hunger and thirst, and later, when they’d resumed their work, Bame stayed silent almost all the time, curtly answering questions addressed to him. Finally, by evening, his intellectual efforts seemed to enable him to achieve the result he was longing for. In one bright moment, he suddenly realized that he would be guaranteed a pair if he would be smarter than the computers and robots. This discovery stunned him so much that the young man stopped working, frozen in place.

  Bef noticed this and asked curiously, “Bame, are you again thinking about this inequality? Do you really hope to comprehend the intent of our creators?”

  Bame turned to her slowly. He had the appearance of a man who is supposedly listening to his interlocutor, but actually is immersed in his thoughts. Seeing his scattered expression, Bef smiled and continued to work, without waiting for a response from her comrade.

  However, it almost immediately became clear that Bef’s words yet influenced Bame, forced him to return to reality and ask a question: “Pamo, what do you think, what should we do with a person who refuses to abide by the rules, even when punished? Should this person be killed? After all, we destroy everything that interferes with the foundation of humanity on Neia.”

  The strangeness and unexpectedness of this question caught the young people unawares, even shocking Bame himself. They looked at each other, confused, until Bef came to her senses first and uttered uncertainly, “Bame, I think your question is meaningless.”

  “Bef, I think this question is not meaningless,” Pamo objected after some thinking. “Of course, it looks absolutely pointless, but what if the necessity really arose, to know what to do with those who did not want to obey the LAI-5? Leave them without food until they die of hunger?”

  “From our birth we have always followed the rules, and thanks to this, the colony is developing according to the plan. Now what? Will we stop fulfilling the plan? Will we jeopardize the only reason why humanity sent…has created us here?" Bef asked gloomily.

  They forgot about their work again. Pamo brushed a dry leaf from off his black hair and said, “But it seems that the LAI-5 really cannot explain to us what to do in our situation. This is absent in its database.”

  “You are wrong,” the girl objected immediately. “You yourself said a minute ago that we must wait for some files to open. We just need to do so.”

  In response to the girl’s words, Bame recalled one of the explanations for the inequality that had become the most popular among the colonists, “Perhaps, indeed, earthlings, remembering that in primitive times men died more often in the fight against wildlife, planned to create boys in an additional quantity. They did not know what conditions the expedition on an alien planet would face.”

  “It is better to finally stop this useless conversation; otherwise we will lose the rest of the day. If there is still a need, we can once again talk about this issue all together in the evening,” Pamo said, summarizing the discussion.

  Chapter 54

  Bame had really tried to discuss the matter in a wide circle, in the evening, after supper, but no one showed interest in the old riddle. Another worry bothered the colonists, much more urgent. More than a day had passed since Ama, Mafkona and Omis had left to get the crystal. In the morning, the expedition had contacted the settlement as planned. Then the scouts had had to cross the river and again get in touch to talk about the crossing. But since then there had been no news from them.

  The light of two lamps, mounted on a radio mast and on a water tower, as usual shone half their light into the crowns of the apple trees. Because of this, the colonists had long been accustomed to having supper at dusk, and this had never affected their appetite; but today, in an unusual silence, they’d barely finished their servings, and now sat motionless at their tables.

  “Could they have lost the UDs?” Caf broke the oppressive silence. “Although, how could they lose three devices simultaneously?”

  “Perhaps they turned off their UDs for some reason, and then forgot to turn them back on?”Fom also expressed his opinion.

  “How can that be?”Arfina asked. “They did not remember their UDs throughout the day?”

  “It is unrealistic,” Caf said quietly, and looked at her comrade with her narrow eyes. “As soon as they were on the other side, they should have spoken to us according to the plan.”

  “Since they cannot contact us, this means that they do not have access to their UDs,” Memi expressed his thought.

  “Obviously,” Nef agreed with him. “But what could stop them? Could it be due to the river? Suppose, they put them in a rucksack, which then fell off the raft-tent and drowned. Could this happen? I think it could.”

  “This is a very plausible assumption,” Memi answered the girl’s words after pondering for a while, “but what does this give us, or what does it change in our situation?”

  “If Nef’s guess is correct,” Guf, a girl with a round face, slightly arched black eyes and a thin figure, began, “then we can assume that they are not in danger… that their masers did not drown together with their UDs, and they decided to continue, because they do not have a choice and… they have some thoughts on how to follow the direction to the crystal deposit without space navigation.”

  “But this is still only an assumption,” Memi said thoughtfully, “What we should do in the current situation? Maybe we either should wait until the time for communication with Earth expires, in the hope that they will bring the crystal to us in time, or we should go tomorrow to find and help them.”

  After a short pause Pamo said, “I think we should not rush. Let us wait until the day after tomorrow, until the deadline. A lack of communication is not really a solid signal that they cannot return on time. And since they no longer have UDs, they cannot follow the line along which navigation has led them to the river. But if we go, then we will follow this very line and miss them with high probability.”

  “Yes, maybe you are right,” Gimi said, sharing his consideration.

  After supper, they usually stayed in the refectory, discussing their plans for the next day or, very rarely, dreaming of the future of their planet, the communication of their descendants with the earthlings.

  Today, no one wanted to talk about tomorrow or, especially, dream of distant events. It was the first night when their comrades had been outside the settlement, and the colonists did not know where they were or what had happened to them.

  Apparently Bame considered the analyzing of this situation as finished, and that was when he tried to draw the attention of his comrades to the uncertainty that he, Bef, and Pamo had come across while working in the garden. Since no one replied to his offer, Bame just uttered, “Then I myself will find a way out.”

  Ch
apter 55

  Omis, Mafkona and Ama saw the creature crawling out of the river. It had a large head and a lower jaw hanging from it like a ramp. In its open mouth, the wayfarers, even from afar, could clearly discern the long, sharp teeth characteristic of predators. Light gray spots covered a body the size of a young cow, as well as its wide tail. It stood on short legs with polydactyl paws, and it didn’t have the pointed trunk peculiar of land predators.

  As soon as the RLH-1 saw the new beast, it wheezed and hobbled upstream, diagonally towards it. The predator ran along the waterline with obvious intent to intercept the herbivore. Both animals moved rather awkwardly on the stony surface. The predator almost caught up with the prey, but the fugitive still managed to escape from it and dive into the depths of the river.

  Apparently, the predator didn’t hope to catch it in the water. Therefore, it ceased the pursuit and simply watched the escaped prey. When it finally realized that its dinner hid from it in the river, he turned away from the stream and with its only vacillating eye surveyed the surroundings. There were strange creatures on the rocks. The animal quickly weighed this news and, being firmly convinced that nothing could resist it, went toward the creatures without hesitation.

  Such a direct attack surprised the scouts utterly. They sat motionless and looked perplexedly at the approaching predator.

  “Run!”Ama came to his senses when the beast had already neared them, and was only five or six steps away.

  Hearing this, the young people jumped to their feet in the blink of an eye and darted away. At the last moment, Ama managed to pick up the bow and quiver that were tied together. At first they ran aimlessly, but then, as if having read each other’s thoughts, they headed for a huge boulder in the middle of the coastline. Despite the fact that the area was strewn with stones, which had slowed them down, looking back the young people saw that the distance between them and this short-legged animal had grown longer.

  In the end, the fugitives outstripped the pursuer by about ten seconds, and Omis climbed a boulder at least two meters high. First he jumped up and grabbed its upper edge, and then his companions shoved him up. Then next, Mafkona jumped. Omis caught her hand, and Ama, having pushed the girl’s buttock, helped her to be safe.

  After this, Ama threw up the weapon to his comrades, and instead of immediately following their example, he couldn’t restrain himself and looked back. In the next instant the young man understood that he had spent that second in vain. Instead of looking back, he should have jumped, and even if he had just bent his knees, this would have been enough to be out of reach of the huge mouth of the beast. And now he didn’t have time to pivot back to the boulder.

  Ama stood like a pillar, unable to figure out what to do. The beast rushed to the attack, without lingering. This decisive assault forced Ama to recover, and he instantly bounced to the side. The predator didn’t have time to stop and it hit the boulder with its open mouth. The blow appeared to have been pretty strong. The brute stepped back a couple of steps and shook its head several times, as if getting rid of something.

  Ama didn’t wait for his opponent to deal with him again. He took two quick steps to the right and jumped to the stone from that side. When he’d grabbed the edge of the boulder and pulled himself up, the young man again couldn’t restrain himself and cast a fleeting glance down. He immediately felt relieved, realizing that his quickness had helped him a lot. It turned out that in the meantime the predator had already recovered and resumed the attack. As a result, its teeth snapped just a few centimeters from Ama’s legs.

  They overshot again, a childhood memory flashed into his brain, when he’d hunted an amphibian without permission. Then an SRC-1 had attacked him, piercing its sharp teeth into his sandal instead of his leg. Ama realized that he should be more careful, otherwise one day they might not miss.

  It was a kind of self-warning, even though it didn’t scare him. On the contrary, and unexpectedly even to himself, Ama felt a desire to fight truly a predator some day. In the end, he also ended up on top of the boulder: on a small, relatively flat surface.

  “Earlier, we never ran away from animals, from anything,” Omis said, puffing. “It turns out that it is nice when you have escaped danger and can look at it from above.”

  “And it also causes strong emotions; at least, I feel them,” Mafkona blurted, catching her breath, and not taking her eyes off the beast.

  It cocked its head and stood motionless at the foot of the stone. Omis leaned over and reached for the bow.

  Ama stopped him. “We should not lose an arrow right now. We do not know what awaits us on the other coast. We are essentially at the beginning of the way. Let us wait a while. It will leave, seeing that it cannot reach us. In addition, this animal does not seem so dangerous to me now.”

  Neian organisms had a sharp, mixed smell of burnt plastic and feces. Because of this, the envoys of Earth tried not to touch the corpses of animals, and almost never cut arrows from their flesh. So Omis nodded to his comrade and removed his hand from the weapon, saying, “I agree that this really is a clumsy creature.”

  “What shall we call it?” Mafkona asked, “Maybe a big river-land carnivore?”

  “Yes, that is right,” Omis backed her, “It is bigger than a man, so it is big. So, this shall be the BRLC-1.”

  Ama nodded his agreement.

  Meanwhile, the BRLC-1 went around the boulder and, finding no way to climb it, patiently lay down as befitted a predator waiting in ambush for its prey. Seeing this, Ama decided that they would still be forced to use the bow, and regretted that he had not taken the maser. At that moment, Mafkona exclaimed, “Our backpacks!”

  The young men looked towards the river where their things lay on the pebbles. They saw that aRLH-1 was exploring their backpacks, perhaps the same one which had recently shown interest in them. It looked like its hunger had caused the animal to seek food in such an unusual place.

  “Why is it behaving so strangely? After all, our produce does not suit it as a meal,” the girl wondered.

  “This creature has never seen terrestrial plants and has never tried to eat them, unlike those near the colony. Therefore, as soon as it tastes our food, it will spit it out,” Omis suggested.

  “Will we just watch and do nothing? What if it scatters and spoils our food?”Mafkona worried.

  “Let us try to set this beast on it. What if that works?” Omis suggested. He went to the edge of the stone and leaned slightly towards the beast. He waved his right hand, then pointed it to the amphibian and gave the command that they used with the dogs: “Bite!”

  Noticing Omis’s movement the beast interpreted it in its own way: it jumped on its paws, opened its mouth and turned its vibrating eye on the three young people.

  “It is not trained,” Mafkona commented.

  “Moreover, this boulder is preventing it from seeing the RLH-1,” Omis added.

  Meanwhile, the amphibian couldn’t understand where the food was, all the same. Trying to tear the backpack, the animal grabbed it with its teeth and shook it from side to side.

  “We have to drive it away,” Ama said and screamed out loud in an effort to scare the RLH-1.

  Instead of the amphibian, the BRLC-1 reacted to his cry, with a long wheeze in response.

  Hearing these voices, especially the predator’s one, the RLH-1 looked around watchfully. It didn’t see any danger, but nevertheless decided to hide in the water and take the food with it. The creature grabbed a backpack strap and pulled it toward the river.

  “Ama, shoot,” Mafkona said tensely. “It is carrying the bag away.”

  The girl was worried about one bag, but in fact the situation was even worse. From this distance, she couldn’t see that, while the animal had wandered among their belongings, the strap of another backpack had wrapped around its hind leg. Now the RLH-1 was dragging that, too.

  With a sharp movement, Ama raised the bow, quickly laid an arrow on the bowstring and took aim. After a few seconds, he released
the tightly-drawn linen cord from his fingers. An arrow with a ceramic tip first pierced the air, and then the hind leg of the animal.

  The RLH-1 unclenched its jaws and hissed in pain, involuntarily releasing the backpack’s strap. It tried to rush to the river but actually it couldn’t even budge from the spot. The strap of the other backpack stopped it, as it was now coiled around its hind, wounded leg. Or rather, one of the masers tied to the bag was the cause of this. The weapon had set against two relatively large stones, like a crossbar

  The RLH-1 didn’t understand what had stopped it and tried to reach the sore spot with its mouth in order to pull the painful thing out of its body. Apparently the animal believed that the object was holding it back. During this movement, the herbivore’s head went under the strap that it earlier had held with its teeth and tried to pull into the water.

  Meanwhile, the predator, hearing the hiss of an injured amphibian, ran around the stone, saw it and rushed toward its habitual prey. Noticing the movement among the boulders, the RLH-1 immediately forgot the arrow. It raised its head and surveyed its vicinity to find out if anything more dangerous had come near. This movement finally put the strap on its neck, and the amphibian was now entangled with two backpacks—one hung from its neck, and the other had entwined its leg with its strap.

  Seeing the fierce predator, the terrified RLH-1 didn’t even try to break free of its fetters. It just frantically jerked toward the river. This attempt allowed it to free itself. The maser slid over the surface of one of the stones, and that released the backpack. The creature, having lost its mind in terror, crawled to the stream, dragging the two bags.

  “The predator has enough time to catch it, and therefore our things will not sink in the river,” Omis expressed hopefully.

  “Terrestrial predators always drag their victims deep into the water, as we have seen in the films,” Ama said in a tense voice. “Maybe the same thing happens on Neia? At least, that SRC-1 in my childhood tried to drag me into the river.”