The Human Experiment

by Kevin McLaughlin

  Forty

  Dana found John’s camp empty. There were signs that he’d been there recently, but there was no John. She could see where he’d been working at…something, though. His house, the one he’d been building out of stone and timber, that structure he’d been so proud of when he showed it to her, all of the timbers were disassembled. The rope that had bound them together was gone.

  She looked around the rest of his encampment. His hand axe was missing as well. There was no sign of any rope anywhere. A worried feeling struck Dana in the pit of her stomach. What was he doing with all of that rope? She looked toward the wall. He’d told her about trying to scale it. He’d made the attempt more than once and nearly killed himself on the last try. Was he taking another shot at it?

  A rustling from behind Dana startled her just before she was about to head toward the wall. She whirled, spear at the ready. But it wasn’t a gator or night-cat. It was just a hooved, four-legged animal. She’d never seen anything precisely like it, but it didn’t look particularly threatening. She could tell just from the animal’s build that it wasn’t a predator. Most likely a plant-eater, not something she needed to worry about.

  Wait, hadn’t John told her a story about an animal that used to keep him company? A deer, he’d called it. Dana wracked her brain, trying to recall the way he’d described the deer.

  “Are you a deer?” Dana asked.

  The animal snorted and nodded its head. That was a shock. Dana had never seen an animal respond to language like that before. Sure, yelling at a bird will startle it into flying away. You could sometimes even scare off night-cats that way, by acting like you’re a bigger predator. But this wasn’t a reaction to her words. This was communication.

  “Do you know where John is?” Dana asked. It seemed like a long shot, but it was certainly worth asking.

  The deer nodded again. Dana sucked in a deep breath. It pawed the ground in front of it with a fore-hoof, looking impatient.

  “Can you take me to him?” she asked.

  It nodded a third time, then turned to trot away from the wall, toward the cliff face. Dana watched it for a few seconds before following. She wasn’t certain the deer was really talking to her with the head nods. That could have meant anything. That might be something it did all the time and have nothing to do with her words at all. But she had no better leads to follow, so it was worth a shot.

  Dana still felt driven to find John, now even more so than before. She had wanted to apologize for her reaction and to thank him for saving her. Even if the method of saving hadn’t been perfect, she thought while ruefully rubbing her jaw.

  Now, it looked like he’d gone and done something drastic. Dana hoped that wasn’t the case. With luck, he was just working on a new project. Somewhere near the edge of the world. After taking apart his house. Sure.

  She wasn’t willing to bet on that.

  The deer stepped out from between the trees into the open space near the cliff. Dana followed only a few steps behind, but by the time she cleared the branches the deer was already a dozen paces ahead of her, standing stock still near a large rock with vines growing around it. No, she realized as she walked closer. The vines weren’t growing there. They’d been placed around the rock. Tied there. She followed the length of rope from the rock to the edge of the cliff.

  “He’s trying to scale that thing?” Dana breathed. She’d looked over the edge of the cliff, once. That was more than enough for her. She’d avoided the thing ever since. Something about looking out into space so vast that you couldn’t see the bottom was unnerving. She wanted nothing to do with that part of their world.

  It looked like she was going to have to get close to the edge again. She tried calling out, first. “John! Are you down there?”

  But the wind tore her words away as soon as she spoke them. Dana was sure that John wouldn’t be able to hear her unless she got closer to the edge. She winced. That was the last place in the world she wanted to be. But what if John was in trouble?

  Serves him right if he is, part of her thought. Why should she put herself at risk for this man? If he was stupid enough to try climbing down that thing, then any consequences were on his head not hers.

  Except that the reason for his sudden departure probably was her fault. She recalled the way she’d glared at him after he struck her. Dana also remembered the horrified expression on John’s face after he knocked her to the ground. She hadn’t imagined that.

  She owed John an apology, for not believing him, and for being a jerk about how she demonstrated it. She’d been so sure that he was only there to pester her into spending time with him again that she’d allowed her anger to overcome her common sense. If the guy who’d been living here his whole life said a plant wasn’t good to eat, maybe listen to him?

  But no. Instead, she’d popped the berry into her mouth just to spite him. Or tried to, anyway. If he hadn’t knocked it away… Dana couldn’t forget the way the bird had died, no matter how much she wanted to.

  Now John was scaling an impossible cliff. Why? Trying to get away from this place.

  “Away from me,” Dana said. He was trying to get away from her. She’d been such a jerk that he felt obligated to leave his home. That wasn’t the action of a man refusing to give Dana her space.

  She took a few careful steps closer to the drop-off, but she still couldn’t see him. There wouldn’t be any way to see where John was until she was right on the very edge.

  Steeling herself for the vertigo she knew she was going to feel, Dana forced herself forward. Her feet didn’t want to move. They felt like they were rooted into the stone, and she wanted nothing more than to run away as fast as she could. If John was in trouble, how was she supposed to help him, anyway? There wasn’t much she could do from up here, and she wasn’t going down there!

  But maybe she could do something for him. If nothing else, she could tell him to come back. Even if there was something he could reach at the bottom of the ravine, she didn’t want him to leave her world—their world.

  Dana took the final step that brought her to the cliff’s edge. She inhaled deeply, and then peered into the void below her. At first, she couldn’t see anything but the mists swirling around as the wind blew them past. She felt like the world was turning beneath her. Reflexively, Dana closed her eyes, but she opened them again immediately. It might have felt like her balance was better with her eyes closed, but that was a lie. A small tip forward would be all it took to send her over the side.

  She fixed her eyes on the rope. It ran over the side and trailed off into the distance below. It wasn’t moving at all. If John was still climbing down the rope, shouldn’t it be jostling about? Did that mean he’d already reached the bottom? Or fallen?

  “John! Can you hear me?” Dana shouted. She cupped her hands to her mouth and repeated the call, but there was no answer. “Damn it, where are you?”

  Then a massive gust of wind spun the mists about, leaving gaps near the cliff. Through one of those gaps Dana caught a glimpse of John, his still form lying on what looked like a ledge. He was a long way down, and he wasn’t moving. Was he hurt? Dead?

  “John!” she shouted again as hard as she could.

  Forty-One

  This was perhaps the most fascinating set of observations Kantrobil had ever experienced. Certainly the most interesting with these animals, which was saying something. The experiments he and Felizian had performed on their subjects were anything but boring. But this was something noteworthy. He had half a mind to summon Felizian to observe the operations, but the humans had only ever seen one deer at a time, before. He wasn’t sure what they would make of seeing two.

  A quick alert to the central computer was the best he could do. At least Felizian would be able to watch what was going on through the monitors. Kantrobil had every possible metric being scanned continuously. The data they obtained would be invaluable, no matter how things played out. But he had a sense there might be a way to turn all of these events to t
heir advantage.

  The human female was peering over the edge. Kantrobil could tell when she saw the male. Her body stiffened, and her hand shot up to cover her mouth. She stared down at him, and Kantrobil watched from a meter away with poorly concealed interest. The male was still alive. Kantrobil had instructed tiny anti-gravity drones to slow his descent after the fall, and then apply anesthesia. He had injuries but nothing serious enough that the nanites running through his bloodstream couldn’t repair within a few days.

  The female couldn’t know that, though. What would she do?

  Almost as if she was hearing his thoughts, she turned away from the ravine and began slowly walking back toward the forest. Her head was down and her body shook. Parameters suggested she was having a grief reaction. She believed the male was dead then. Time to intervene.

  Kantrobil stepped out into her path. She looked up, startled, and took a step back.

  “What do you want?” Dana asked.

  Kantrobil walked past her to the edge of the ravine.

  “No way. Not happening,” Dana replied. She turned to continue walking away.

  Kantrobil sprinted past her and stood in her path a second time. He shook his head. The female raised her spear toward him in a threatening manner. If Kantrobil hadn’t been protected by a force field, he might have been worried. But there was nothing such a primitive weapon could do to harm him, so it was more amusing than anything else. He shook his head again.

  “He’s gone! There’s nothing I can do for him now,” Dana said. Droplets of water were running from her eyes.

  Kantrobil shook his head again.

  “He’s not dead?” Dana asked. Her eyes got wide, then narrowed again. “How…?”

  He ignored her questions this time and walked back to the edge. She followed him and looked down. Kantrobil issued a series of mental commands, and the drones flying near the male blew away the water vapor so that she could see him again. He heard her sharp intake of breath and knew he’d been right. This was the correct course of action to take. The female wanted to have hope. She didn’t want the male to be dead. Now the question was, what was she going to do about it?

  Would she have the courage to take action? Or would she demur and leave him to his fate?

  She had no way of knowing her own fate was tied to her answer, of course. If she rescued the male and they became attached, then the next phase of the experiment could proceed as planned. The female subject’s euthanasia would be postponed, perhaps indefinitely, if she chose to mate with the male.

  But if she walked away instead, then Kantrobil would need to step in and rescue the male himself. The euthanasia order would remain in place: this female would be put to sleep, and the other one introduced in the hopes of achieving a new mated pair.

  It was good science to have as little waste as possible, and the data he was getting from these observations were well worth the extra effort involved.

  Forty-Two

  Dana stared over the edge of the cliff at John’s still form. She couldn’t see if he was breathing or not, but maybe there was something the deer could tell from up here that she could not. Either its vision might be better than hers, able to pick out his breathing, or perhaps it could smell him from so far away.

  That still didn’t solve her dilemma. Even if John was alive, how could she help him? There was no way to give him aid from up here. If she was going to be of any use to him at all, she needed to go down there. Even the thought gave her chills. There was no way to see how far down the cliff went, but it was clearly far enough to kill her if she fell from this height. Dana would have to climb down John’s rope to reach him.

  It wasn’t just hard. It was practically impossible.

  But if she left him there and he was still alive, how would she live with herself? It was her actions that had driven him to this desperate climb. Guilt settled on Dana’s shoulders with a weight that drove her to her knees. The answer was simple, she had to try something.

  “Well, he made it down. It can’t be too hard,” Dana said trying to shore up her confidence. She pushed away the thought that John had clearly not made it down safely. He’d fallen onto the ledge from enough height to at least knock him unconscious. She looked at the strange deer. It had seemed especially adamant she go back to the cliff for another look when she was trying to walk away.

  “You stay here and keep an eye on the rope,” Dana told the deer. It nodded in reply, and she shook her head with wonder. She’d never had this sort of communication with an animal before. She needed to rethink her attitude about animals. About all things.

  That was for later. Now was the time for doing. Dana grabbed hold of the rope and slowly eased herself over the side. Her feet dangled over the edge, and she froze for a moment, unable to continue. Then she took a hard breath and wrapped her legs around the rope. Using both her legs and arms, she was able to slowly lower herself down the rope.

  The wind rocked her back and forth. Each gust shoved Dana’s body painfully against the rough stone beside her. She ground her teeth together and kept climbing. There was nothing else to do. She had to reach the ledge and see to John because she had gone too far to think about backing out now.

  “I hope you appreciate all of this,” Dana grumbled aloud. Inside, she hoped he was still alive to appreciate anything at all. She still wasn’t sure if this entire expedition was a waste of time, a huge risk for nothing.

  It was time for change. Time for being human. She knew of only one other. She could abandon him and guarantee her loneliness, or she could try to live with the joy she'd known growing up. He was right there. All she had to do was reach him.

  The climb down took longer than she’d hoped. Her arms were trembling by the time her toes were finally able to touch down on the hard stone shelf. Dana’s whole body felt like it was on fire. Climbing trees was nothing like climbing down a cliff. But she’d made it. Dana slowly eased her legs and hands away from the rope. Both palms were bright red from the climb, and blisters stood out on each. Her right shoulder was raw and bleeding from where she’d scraped it against the cliff.

  But she was down. Dana took a cautious step on the ledge. It seemed strong enough to support both of their weight, but she didn’t want to take any chances. She crept forward, one gentle footstep at a time, until she was beside John’s still body. She knelt down next to him. Her hand went to his neck first. It was warm. He was still alive! She could feel his heart beating under her fingertips. He was bleeding from a score of wounds, and it looked like he’d broken his left arm and leg, but he was alive.

  She shook his shoulder as roughly as she dared, given the extent of his injuries. There was no reaction. She had to wake him up, somehow. The climb down had been bad enough. There was no way she could get back up the cliff while carrying him! Dana leaned in close to John’s ear.

  “John, you need to wake up,” she said. “You’ve got to help me get you to safety. We can’t stay here.”

  The wind continued to rage around them. She might have been able to survive on this shelf for a while, but as injured as he was, the exposure could finish the job the fall had started. There was no question, she had to get him out of there. But how?

  “John, wake up, damn it!” Dana shouted.

  He groaned in response. It was barely audible, and he didn’t move. But it was something, although it didn’t help her raise him out of this mess. Dana stood up and examined the rope.

  Raise him up. That gave her an idea. Back home—the thought still made her wince in remembered pain, since home was gone forever—her people had built their houses in treetops. Sometimes that had involved lifting large timbers aloft into the branches. Climbing up with the loads didn’t work, so the builders would hang ropes from a branch, sometimes looping the ropes around more than one branch. Somehow that lightened the load, made them able to lift tree trunks that were impossibly heavy.

  Could she somehow do the same thing here with John? It was worth a try. Carrying him wasn’t an opt
ion. Neither was leaving him here to die.

  Dana grabbed the rope and hauled. There was still another twenty feet of the stuff dangling below the ledge. She hauled all of it up onto the shelf next to her. Then she looped a hunk of the rope around John, wrapping him three times around his chest. That should be enough to keep him safe. She tied off the rope with the best knots she could manage.

  Dana's arms ached from the climb down. Her hands were raw, her shoulder bleeding. But there was only one way out—up. Dana grabbed the rope with both hands, locked her legs around it, and began to climb.

  Forty-Three

  The ascent was easier than she’d thought it would be. Maybe she was getting better at climbing, or perhaps she was still feeling the rush from being in danger. Whatever the case, her muscles responded to the demands she was putting on them. It didn’t take her long to reach the top.

  That was the easy part. Getting John out was going to be more difficult. Dana glanced down at the wood poles John had laid underneath the rope. That was a smart move on his part. It probably kept the cliff edge from cutting his rope in half. But it also provided her with just the tools she needed for the job.

  Dana quickly slipped off her rope belt. She used one end of the rope to lash two of the poles together in an X shape. Then she took the other end of the rope and tied it to a thick stick, which she pounded into the ground. Then she lifted the X upright so that the stake and rope supported the structure. Now she had something that might work as a pulley.

  She ran John’s rope over the X, using the extra slack in the line to get it over the top. Then she gave a few experimental tugs. The rope holding her X platform together held. If it broke, then the rope would be torn out of her grasp, and John would drop to the end of the rope.

  “No time like the present,” Dana said. She heaved on the line.

  It moved easily until she took out the rest of the slack. But she could feel the sudden change when she was hauling up John’s weight instead of just the rope. Dana grunted with the effort. A few inches came over the top of her X, and then a whole foot. Inch by inch, she slowly dragged the rope and its load upwards.