The Human Experiment

by Kevin McLaughlin

  “No, nothing like that. I saw a deer once, but no other animals. Not until you came,” John replied.

  “That’s just…weird.”

  “You’re telling me?” John said. “You arrive and this place turns upside-down. First birds, now that thing. What’s next?”

  “I wish I knew,” Dana said.

  He heard her sitting up behind him. She stifled a gasp, and he spared a glance for her. Dana’s leg was gashed open from the gator’s teeth. Blood poured down her calf. It was a nasty wound, deep, but the cuts were clean. If he could stop the bleeding soon, she ought to be fine.

  “We need to get that patched up,” John said. “Hang on, OK?”

  Dana nodded, tight-lipped. She gripped her leg tightly, blood squeezing out between her fingers. He had to stop that bleeding! There were plenty of leaves around, but he needed something to keep pressure on the leaves so they would stop the bleeding. The little roots he’d been using for rope might work.

  But they were the roots of water plants. Out there, in the river. Where the gator was still waiting. John imagined trying to yank one of the plants out of the water and having the lizard latch on to his leg. He shuddered. He could still see it, a dark shadow sitting on the muddy river bottom. It wasn’t moving anymore, but he didn’t think it was dead either.

  John couldn’t think of anything else that would stop the bleeding half as well. He had some roots drying near his hut, but he’d have to cross the river to get to them. Same problem, and then he’d need to cross it twice. No, it was better to go out and dig up fresh ones. He was going to need both hands. John carefully slid the hatchet back into his rope belt. It would be close at hand if he needed it. He hoped he wouldn’t.

  “You just stay out there,” John muttered to himself as he waded out into the water.

  “What are you doing?” Dana asked.

  “Getting something to patch you up,” John replied. He took a few more steps. The water was knee deep, cold and swirling around his legs. That was usually a refreshing feeling, but not today. He spotted a few of the long-rooted water plants nearby and took two more steps toward them.

  John glanced back at the gator. Had it moved? He thought it was a little closer to him than it had been, but he couldn’t see any signs of it creeping nearer now. It was utterly still. He reached into the water with both hands to grab the plant, trying to keep one eye on the creature at the same time.

  Were those movements just the ripples of the water or the gator swimming nearer? John couldn’t be sure. His breath was coming faster. He plunged both of his hands into the water and reached for the plant. It felt cold and slimy in his fingers. John tugged and met resistance. The same long roots that made the plants useful also made them difficult to pull free.

  He yanked harder. The plant came loose in his hand, but when John looked down there were no roots attached! He’d pulled too hard. He reached down to try again.

  “Hurry! I think it’s moving,” Dana said.

  John spared another look for the lizard. Dana was right. It was definitely moving. It wasn’t coming at him swiftly, but he could see the legs working against the muddy river bottom. He grabbed the next plant and pulled. This time the root came free more easily, and he surged back toward the shore, splashing through the water as quickly as he could.

  He glanced back. The gator wasn’t giving chase. John made it to the shore unscathed. He shook his head, wondering what he was going to do about the animal. He couldn’t very well have a dangerous predator living in his water supply. That would be a disaster. It was something to worry about later, though. Dana was still bleeding. John picked fresh leaves from a nearby tree.

  “Here, this will help,” John said, kneeling beside Dana. He laid the leaves on her wound and carefully bound them in place with the root, tying the knots tight enough that she winced. “Has to be tight or it won’t stop the bleeding.”

  “I understand. It’s not fun, though,” she replied.

  “Then stop getting bitten,” John said with a small grin.

  “Wasn’t trying to! You said there were never any gators here before?”

  “Nope. Brand new,” John said. Like the birds. And like Dana herself.

  “Weird. We used to have them around, sometimes. They mostly stayed away from us, though,” Dana said. She pushed herself off the ground, wincing as she gingerly tried to put weight on her injured leg. “It’s why we built our homes in trees. Gators and other things.”

  John wanted to ask what sorts of other things there were out there, and if they were more dangerous than the gators. But before he could open his mouth, he saw Dana’s eyes flicker toward the water. He turned swiftly, hand going back to his hatchet in case the lizard was coming after them again.

  There was no need. It was floating in the middle of the river, belly up. As John watched the current gradually took it downstream. In a little while, it would sail over the edge of the cliff, and that would be the end of it.

  John had mixed feelings. The gator had bitten Dana badly, and tried to drown her. It had tried to bite him, as well. He didn’t doubt that it would gladly have eaten them if it was given the chance. But he’d never killed anything before. The jarring realization that his hands could end a life shook him. Dana roused him from his thoughts by wading out into the river.

  “What are you doing?” John asked. He shook his head. He’d have to re-dress her injury again. Being wet wasn’t going to do her wounds any good.

  “Getting the carcass,” Dana replied.

  “What if there are more of them?”

  “That’s why I have this,” Dana said, shaking her spear. “That one got me by surprise. It won’t happen again.”

  “But why? What good is it?”

  Dana grabbed the gator by its tail and hoisted it from the water before wading back toward shore. “You have fire, right?” she asked.

  “Yes.”

  “Then it’s time for dinner. You haven’t lived until you’ve eaten something that tried to eat you.”

  Thirty

  Felizian was shaking with frustrated anger, his horns trembling. They’d been so close to losing everything! If even one of the humans had been killed, they’d have been back to square one.

  “What were you thinking?” Felizian demanded.

  “About what?” Kantrobil replied. His nonchalant tone further infuriated Felizian.

  “You introduced a new animal to the pen. You didn’t even discuss the matter with me first. Worse, it was a dangerous animal. We could have lost one or both of the subjects!”

  “Calm yourself and think about this rationally,” Kantrobil said. “The male subject wasn’t in any real danger. It was the female who was at risk, and we have a spare female second-generation subject we can replace her with, if we need to.”

  Felizian inhaled deeply, trying to follow his partner’s advice and think the problem through. The problem was, he was still too close to the issue when it came to this experiment. They had both invested too many years of work that the risk of losing was too much.

  “But why?” Felizian asked. “What was the purpose?”

  “Look at them,” Kantrobil said, turning to face the monitor where video of their subjects was playing.

  The two humans were still together. They had crossed the river back to the male’s side, carrying the reptile’s body with them. The female subject was doing something with the corpse. Felizian wasn’t sure what at first. Then he realized she was carving the dead animal up. He swallowed hard.

  “I’m looking, and my stomach is turning,” Felizian said.

  “There’s no room for the squeamish in science, isn’t that what you always say?” Kantrobil asked.

  Taken to task with his own words. The day couldn’t possibly get any worse. No, that wasn’t true. They could have already lost one or both of the humans. That would have been worse. For that matter, there was no guarantee Kantrobil wouldn’t do something else to put their experiment at risk. He’d been acting in a manner F
elizian couldn’t quite fathom.

  “True enough,” Felizian said. “They’re preparing to heat the dead reptile in their fire. Why is this a good thing? We’ve encouraged them to kill and eat flesh. You ever wonder if the flesh-eating humans might think we were a meal if they saw us?”

  “Like they could,” Kantrobil scoffed. “These primitive things? We’re in no danger. But look, Felizian! They’re together again. The humans are cooperating.”

  Felizian looked back at the screen. The two were sitting side by side in front of the fire. The female was showing the male how to put the reptile’s flesh on a stick to sear it in the fire. They were talking to each other. Smiling at one another. And they were laughing.

  When the female had departed to the other side of the river and refused to allow the male near her, it had confounded the two scientists. They were the only two members of their species in the pen. Why weren't they mating? Or at least doing the sort of pre-mating activity that had been observed from others of the species? Some sort of rapid bonding had been the expected reaction.

  Instead, the pair had gone their separate ways, and when the male attempted to contact the female, he was rebuffed. It looked to Felizian like he had given up. Which wasn’t disastrous, since they had another female they could use in a pinch. But having to remove the first female and replace her with another wasn’t optimal for their experiment. Although he was willing to be painstakingly patient with this experiment, Felizian didn’t want to add unnecessary delay either.

  All that seemed in the past now. The two humans were seated side by side. As Felizian watched them, the female reached out and touched the male’s arm, smiling at him. It was astonishing to watch.

  “How?” Felizian asked. “If I’d just been attacked by something trying to eat me, my own procreative impulses might be set back by years!”

  “It was something I recalled from earlier in the experiment. Some of the animals pair-bonded very rapidly. Those who did so tended to form bonds after some sort of traumatic event. A death, a scare…an attack,” Kantrobil said.

  “So you engineered the attack in order to get them to bond,” Felizian said.

  “That was my hope, yes.”

  “What was wrong with simply waiting? We could have given them more time to see if they would bond. They are the only two animals of their species in the pen. Surely they would eventually have mated,“ Felizian wondered.

  “Perhaps, but then again perhaps not. Given the initial antipathy we noted, I felt there was the possibility of escalation to violence. We’ve seen examples of this species mating violently, and the females tend to fare poorly after those events, remember,” Kantrobil said. He sighed and shook his antlers. “We need an extended pair bonding for the next stage of the experiment. I felt the small risk involved was worth the possible results. And look! It certainly seems like we’ve done it. They’re together.”

  “They’re still not breeding,” Felizian said. “Don’t count your humans before they are birthed.”

  “They will,” Kantrobil said. He sounded far more confident than Felizian felt.

  “And if they don’t? If she discards him again?” Felizian asked.

  Kantrobil gave a little shake of his head in response, their equivalent of a shrug.

  “Then we remove her and start with the other one. No sense wasting more time. If even the stress of near death won’t draw these two together, we’ll scrap the female and try again. After all, that’s why we made sure we had two,” Kantrobil replied.

  Thirty-One

  Dana was right. Eating something that had tried to eat you was strangely satisfying. John didn't have much to compare the gator meat against, having never eaten anything like it. It was both filling and delicious. Dana promised him she would soon broaden his diet further. Apparently, the birds were edible, as well, and she had experience building tools that would take them down.

  They were both sated before they'd finished even half of the Gator's meat. John stared at the rest of it, still pinned in place over the flames by the spit they'd roasted it on.

  He was having a hard time getting past the fact that the food he'd just eaten came from a living being. A creature he'd killed.

  He didn't feel guilty about killing it. The gator was trying to eat Dana and would have taken a bite out of him if given half a chance. John didn't even feel badly about eating it afterward. Wasting a viable food resource was foolish. Besides, gator tasted good.

  No, if anything, he felt powerful. Strong. Capable. He'd faced down this nightmare of teeth and slain it. Then, as the final proof of superiority, he made the monster into his dinner. There was something primal about those actions, which touched a deep part of John, one he'd never explored before.

  “I’m stuffed. Couldn't eat another bite,” Dana said.

  “Seems a shame to waste what's left of it,” John said.

  She glanced over at him. “Don’t worry, we won't. We can smoke the rest of the meat. It won't keep for too long, but it should last at least a couple of days. Plenty of time to eat the rest.”

  “It’s not smoked now?” John asked, waving at the meat hanging over the smoky fire.

  Dana stared at him for a moment before she replied. “You’re not kidding, are you? This really is all new to you. You’ve never eaten meat?”

  John nodded. “Just fruit, nuts and, recently, some roots.”

  “You’ve never seen any animals before?”

  “Once. There was a deer here a while ago. At least, I think it was a deer. That’s my best guess from stories my parents told me,” John replied. “But other than that? No, not until you arrived.”

  John wondered what happened to the deer. He missed his old companion. The deer had shown him how to feed himself after the disastrous storm. More than that, it had been a companion, the source of much needed company during a time he’d never felt more alone. He hoped it was all right, wherever it was. John feared the deer had tumbled off the cliff to its death. But seeing Dana arrive the way she had, he had hope that something else might have happened to the deer. Perhaps it had been transported away to some other place, the same way she had?

  “Weird,” Dana said. “Well, there sure are animals here now. Better get used to it.”

  “I suppose so,” John said. He found he wasn’t entirely thrilled with the idea. The birds were OK, if a little annoying. But the gator was not. He had a vision of the thing coming up on him in his sleep, and shuddered. Dana had told him that her people had slept in tree houses to help guard against predatory animals. John eyeballed the trees around him. It was sounding like a better idea all the time.

  “Well, we’ve got a lot to do if we’re going to smoke the rest of this gator. Can you dig a shallow hole while I collect some green wood?” Dana asked.

  “Sure. How deep?”

  “About a hand deep, if you aim your fingers down.”

  “You want it near the fire?” John asked. He was beginning to get a mental image of what was involved in the process.

  “Yes. I’ll be back soon,” she said.

  John picked up a rock and started digging. He made short work of it. The loam in this area was thick and full. That’s why he’d picked it for his base of operations in the first place. His rock cut through the stuff rapidly, and soon, he had a hole about the depth Dana had asked for and large enough across to fit the chunks of gator meat remaining. He was sweating even in the cool evening air by the time he’d finished, so he went to the river for a sip of water.

  That simple task had taken on new meaning in the wake of the attack. John eyed the water warily. This little shore had been a haven for him. He’d basked in the sun there, fallen asleep there, bathed in the water… He might still do at least some of those things in the future, but the carefree feeling was gone, and he missed it. He approached the river with caution, watching for any sudden movement that might indicate the presence of another gator.

  But the place was clear. There was no sign of another lizard. This ti
me, anyway. John sipped water, and then went back to the fire. It was still burning, but the flames were dying down and most of the light was coming from embers instead, casting a red glare across nearby tree trunks. John went to sit down, and then realized that Dana had been gone quite a while. It was fast growing dark, and she hadn’t returned.

  “Dana? Can you hear me?” John called out.

  There wasn’t any answer. How far had she gone in her search for green wood? It shouldn’t have brought her far from the fire. What if there was another wild animal out in the woods, silently stalking them both? Did Dana have her spear? John couldn’t see it in the dim firelight, but he wasn’t sure she had taken it with her.

  “I’m going to have to go find her,” he said aloud.

  John picked his hatchet up from the ground before leaving the fire. He should have had it with him at the river and realized that some sort of weapon was probably going to be a necessity at all times from here on out. Axe in hand, John set out into the darkness, searching in the same direction Dana had departed.

  The wall loomed ahead. His camp wasn’t far from where he’d dug the tunnel, but he avoided going near it. Just looking at it had messed him up, earlier. He didn’t want to approach the tunnel at night. That would almost certainly be worse.

  Instead, he turned to his left, following the wall toward the river. John hadn’t gone very far at all when he heard the sound of someone sobbing up ahead. He turned toward the noise. He didn’t want to startle Dana, but if she needed help he wanted to be there for her.

  “Dana? Is that you?” John asked.

  Another sob was the only answer he heard, but it sounded like her. Something was wrong. John stepped through the trees, following the noise to its source. In the dim starlight, John saw Dana, sitting on the ground beneath a tree. She held her head in both hands, and she was crying. He couldn’t see any obvious injuries, but it was dark.

  “Are you hurt?” John asked.