What chance had a small human against the ikfa-ronax? I swallowed and broke into a run. Intuition pulled me to the battle I feared to find. The whispers of the Goddesses urged me into the trees. I swung myself up onto a branch and leapt from tree to tree, using wide limbs as a path above the thick underbrush that slowed my steps.
There! I heard the deep-throated rumble of an angered tree thief. Enhancing my sight-capture, I spotted its light-refracting camouflage. It poised to leap at something obscured by a tree trunk. I knew. I knew it was the human. It bellowed again, and I sprinted through the network of branches, willing myself to reach her in time.
A death scream ripped the air and pierced my ears, followed by a gurgle. When I would have leapt to the ground, I spied the furred beast rolling amidst the ichor, tearing at a spear lodged in its throat.
I belted a startled laugh. She had bested the tree thief!
I slowed my pace, reluctant to alarm her with my sudden appearance, but when I drew closer, I saw her posture. She appeared tired, uncertain. Thrusting her flimsy weapon toward the yowling beast, her movements became erratic.
She desired to end the animal’s suffering but seemed reluctant to do so.
Ah. This thing, Hivelt could do.
I ran and jumped, timing my landing to drive my weapon in a final death thrust. The tree thief ceased thrashing. I withdrew my weapon and swiped it across the fur, then unhooked the spear from its gaping, bloody mouth. I cleaned it and handed it to the builder.
Her dark visor lightened, and I saw relief sweep across her expression when she closed her eyes. She swayed a moment but then straightened herself and met my gaze with ferocity.
“I am Pattee Crow Flies. I am dying. I need you.”
She spoke Theraxl? And she was dying?
I searched her eyes. “You look very alive.” I gestured to her body. While she was small by my people’s standards, she looked strong. I had seen her carry armloads of firewood and large containers of water.
“What is your name?” she asked.
My chest puffed out. I stood taller and slid my glove over my chest. “I am Iktheka Hivelt Matheza.”
Patt-ee bowed a fraction. She cocked her head as if listening, made a disgruntled face, then spoke: “May the life of Shegoshel shine upon us and our offspring.”
I opened my mouth. “Ah.” My heart-home creaked and groaned. Pain twitches radiated from my chest. I growled.
She leaned back, though her way was hedged by tree trunks. Perhaps my growl had spooked her.
I finished the protocol greeting. “May the death of our enemies bring peaceful slumber.”
She slumped in obvious relief.
I, on the other hand, felt no relief. I folded my arms and stared at her. If I could quell the cramps in my heart-home, I would. I waited for her to speak more.
“Your planet’s air contains a bacterium fatal to my race,” she said. She gestured around her. “I was safe until my helmet was removed.”
Hm. She avoided saying it was I who had removed her helmet.
“I am thankful you saved my life the day I became dehydrated.” She bowed her head again. “And thank you for ending this animal’s suffering.” She pressed a hand deep into its fur. “But I must ask for your help once more. My technology”—she tapped her helmet—“tells me the medicine to heal me can be manufactured from a single drop of your Holy Waters of Shegoshel and a sampling of waters from a cave pool.”
Heat flamed from my chest up my neck. My jaws clenched so tight I thought I might crack my teeth. The Holy Waters of Shegoshel were for my people and my people alone.
“And with your permission, a small sample of your DNA will allow my technology to create a vaccine so that I may live on your world without fear of dying.”
My brows met. I lowered my gaze to meet hers, forgetting my helmet hid my expressions. “Your technology insists on a drop of the Holy Waters?”
Her face paled but she did not cower. “Ik.”
She used my word for ‘yes’ without the aid of her helmet. I paused.
“A sampling of waters from a cave pool?”
She nodded.
“I do not know what this DEE ENN AYYY means.”
She opened her mouth. Closed it. Cocked her head. Her mouth moved again. “Is your helmet malfunctioning?” she asked.
Taken aback, I stepped away. “How do you know this?”
Joaxma, er, Patt-ee, gave a half-smile then grew serious again. “My technology can access the information from your helmet. It ascertained your communications device has malfunctioned. She may be able to bypass the disabled circuitry and reroute the power to repair it.”
Visions of sight-captures, a raging queen, dying brethren, and an entire race of angry Theraxl flooded my mind.
“You must not!” I raised my weapon.
Patt-ee looked afraid for the first time since I had seen her.
I regained control of myself and sheathed my weapon. “I do not wish to communicate with my brethren,” I said in a softer voice, still resting my hand on the hilt of my double-blade.
“My technology was going to send you images in your own language to explain DNA. She apologizes and meant no harm for intruding.”
My shoulders dropped. I breathed a sigh. “The Holy Waters of Shegoshel are sacred to my people.”
Patt-ee reached out her hands toward mine but dropped them before touching me.
A tremor ran up my arms to my heart, which thudded painfully.
“I know. I would never ask,” she said. She licked her lips. My gaze tracked her tongue swiping her lips. “There is no other way. I will be dead within fourteen days or less without it.” She rubbed her arms as if to comfort herself. She softened her gaze when she looked at the fallen beast behind me. “I had hoped to take this pelt. But my health needs to come first.”
The vial of Holy Waters seemed to boil in the pouch at my waist. Scores of my brethren had died in search for it. Fathers, brothers, hunters. Some of the best of us, the mightiest, the noblest were risking their lives and posterity to gather more, even now, while the Ikma Scabmal Kama lay in her velveted lair, receiving the seed of our males, never to fertilize the grounds for more offspring. Heat seethed in my heart, and for a time, the pain eased.
Patt-ee waited. She searched my helmet with her gaze, perhaps seeking a sign of my acquiescence.
“We will collect a sample from the cave pool first,” I said. “Come.” I turned to retrace our steps through the ikfal.
Some distance to the east from where she had laid her snares was the sinkhole I had slid down to find glisten-fish.
She kept pace with my long strides, and this pleased me. In half a zatik, we would reach the entrance. Hivelt would keep his word to the Goddesses and preserve the human’s life.
25
I turned off my mic. I didn’t want Hivelt to hear my coughs and sneezes. As if joining him had flipped a switch inside my immune system, all the symptoms arrived at once. My eyes watered. I stumbled a few times and lost track of time. My internal mantra was now: “Get to the cave pool. Collect the sample. Beg for The Drop. Race home.”
I couldn’t scan the feral beauty of the jungle for danger as my dogged steps trudged after Hivelt. I put my trust in him to keep us both safe. All my energy went into staying abreast and upright.
“Temperature of 101 degrees detected. Please return to the EEP for emergency medical treatment.”
“About that,” I said. I coughed some more and had to stop for a moment.
Hivelt turned then. He approached me and looked down into my face. “Your eyes stream liquid. Are you crying?”
I frowned and toggled my mic. “No,” I said. I meant to turn it off afterwards, but my cough was too fast. I bent over as I hacked up a lung. “The illness has attacked quickly,” I said between breaths. “Perhaps I should wait here for you.” Sitting in the duff on the forest floor had never seemed so appealing. My chest burned.
“That is nonsense, Patt-ee Crow Flies.”
He picked me up.
Immediate relief flooded my lungs.
“We will discover the cave pool together and collect your sample. Let us make haste,” he said.
I relaxed against his armor. I felt feverish. Yes, let’s make haste.
The shadows of late afternoon bounced in and out of view, orange light splattering dark green leaves in patches.
My coughing eased in Hivelt’s arms. I was grateful. “You met another human?” I asked him.
“Yes. Her name is Esra,” he said without hesitation.
A wellspring of hope bubbled in me. Another human! “Where is she now?”
“Esra took up with my hunter-brother Naraxthel. They traveled to the under-mountain passageways first. My other brothers will join them. Together they seek the Holy Waters of Shegoshel.”
“Are they difficult to find?” Another coughing fit took me by storm.
He waited for me to stop. “I have some with me. Will it ease your suffering if you take it now?”
I laid my helmet against his chest. “No,” I said. “My technology needs to combine it with the cave pool sample back in my ship.”
His arms tightened around me. “Will you die before I return you to your ship?”
I turned off my mic. “VELMA, how long do I have before the infection compromises my systems?”
“I calculate at least three days without any medical intervention,” VELMA said. “However, I am confident in my ability to manufacture the healing agent, provided Hivelt acquires the needed items.”
“Thank you,” I said. I turned to Hivelt. “I have a few days. It will be fine.” I punctuated my statement with another coughing fit so bad Hivelt stopped and held my head to his chest. Through my helmet and his armor, I thought I could feel his heart beating—a comforting sensation.
“All life is wired to live,” my father said. “Look at the tiniest bug or the oldest tree. Each life wants to live, to survive, to fight, to reproduce. If you look carefully, you can trace the desire for life along the walk of every living creature. The bee’s flight path, the ant’s parades, or the lying politician. We all want to live. So stay alive, Pattee. For your old Dad. Stay alive.”
Thanks, Dad.
26
I tamped down the shiver of alarm that sparked in my heart-home every time I heard Patt-ee cough. We were close to both the cave pool and her ship. There was no need to worry. However, there was the matter of the mudslide. Did her suit support underwater environments as mine did? Did she have the strength to travel through the cave tunnels, exit at the gulch, and climb the cliff face to the glade? My lips turned down at the questions.
Hivelt must avoid the obstacles that would delay her healing process. I considered the past zatiks, finding her ship empty, scouring the ground for her tracks, and remembered she had supplies.
“Have you a rope?”
“Yes,” she said.
“How much water from the cave pool do you need?” I said.
She held out a vial. “This is all we need,” she said, her voice hoarse.
“Ah, a small amount. Good.” We neared the place where the ground had opened and swallowed me. The rains had caused much destruction.
Loosening my grip around her legs, I let her stand. I released her but held her hand to prevent her from walking. “Look there, at the base of this rock wall where the vines climb it.” I gestured to the gaping hole. “It drops 110 veltiks to a large cave pool.”
Her wan smile faded into another coughing fit.
I unlashed my water canister and drank deeply before emptying the rest onto the ground. When I looked up, Patt-ee was pulling a coil of rope from her pack.
She handed it to me.
I knotted a loop around the canister and knelt beside the hole. I looked up at Patt-ee, who used the rock wall to steady her legs. Unsheathing my weapon, I handed it to her. “The forest-teeth tree is not far. Take care to sever the vines that try to trap our legs while I gather the water.”
She nodded, her eyes large, and scanned the ground around us, while I lay in a prone position, and lowered the canister.
I liked the texture of the rope in my hands, but I could not make out its material. I heard Patt-ee strike vines at my feet. The forest-teeth tree was always hungry.
I heard the distant splash of the canister, and I maneuvered the rope a little, hoping to swirl the container and draw enough water for the vial. Pulling on the rope, its weight assured me I had managed to collect some. Steady thwacking urged me to pull faster while preventing it from spilling. At last, the dim gleam of its metal caught my eye, and I retrieved it, sidling back away from the hole, having no desire to slide down again.
I knelt and filled the vial, capped it, and returned it to her. “Let us travel to your little ship, Patt-ee.”
She nodded. Her usual proud posture slumped as she handed me my weapon.
I took her up without complaint.
We were a mere half-zatik from where Patt-ee placed her snares at the glade’s tree line. She would soon be safe in her ship and healing with the aid of her technology.
27
Jostling wakened me from a deep sleep. Hivelt was already running through the jungle with me pressed against his chest plates.
“VELMA, how much longer to the glade?”
“If Hivelt maintains his current pace, you will arrive in seventeen minutes.”
I blinked and watched layers of green and brown blur by. I must have fallen asleep as soon as he had picked me up. Hivelt did maintain his pace. I studied his helmet, so frightening and intense. It was matte-black, made of material I was unfamiliar with, and carved into it were scaled locks of mane, as if a lion had been transformed by Medusa into a reptilian water god. His helmet had a black rectangular visor covering the eyes. There was a snout, carved fangs and tongue on his helmet, as if Mishibizhiw himself had frozen mid-snarl. In that myth, the cougar-demon drowned his victims. But Hivelt was helping me. Again.
“Thank you for helping me,” I said.
“I am a servant to the Goddesses of Shegoshel,” he said. “It is Their will that I serve you.”
“I could walk for a while?”
“It is expedient that we run.”
I heard a huff and breath, and I realized he was pushing himself. “Let me walk,” I said, my voice stronger. I had been resting.
“No,” he bit off the word. His arms tightened around me, so I stopped talking.
“I saw your Goddesses in a dream,” I finally said. “The Thunderbird of my people escorted me to meet them high in the mountaintops. They were very beautiful. I had a strange purple sword at my waist.”
He slowed to a stop.
We were deep in the jungle, the canopy thick with vines, leaves, and twining plants around thick tree trunks of many shades of brown and gray. No wind stirred the jungle. No creatures called to one another.
Hivelt set me down and stepped back. He removed his helmet. His black brows and black fronds of hair swept away from his crown as his dark gaze penetrated me. His nostrils flared. “My Goddesses came to you in a dream?”
“Yes, I think so.” I cocked my head. “A few times.”
“I only dream of them when I am on Ikthe,” he said. “This planet. The Holy Sisters of Shegoshel are concerned about you. They sent me to the glade when the pazathel-naxl and the rokhura battled near your ship.”
I pursed my lips and tilted my head. “They sent you?”
“Ik. With some urgency,” he said.
“I dreamed of legends,” I said, searching his eyes. “I never dreamed of my people’s deities until I came here.”
“Ah,” he said. “This is a very sacred place.” He circled his hand to include all around us. “Death and life intersect here; it brings us within reach of the land of Shegoshel and the Mountain of Eternal Death. The Goddesses are only a prayer and a dream away.” He reached a claw out and touched the center of my helmet, over my forehead. “But you have not ingested the Holy Waters of Shegoshel.”
“No. I don’t even know what they look like,” I said with a shrug.
“What did this sword look like?”
I frowned. “I don’t recall. I thought it was strange that I had one. I just have the machete and the javelin in real life.” I mimed resting my hand on its hilt. “I put my hand on the hilt like this. And it felt right.”
Hivelt folded his massive arms and leaned back a little to look up at the canopy. “The Goddesses have visited me in a dream as well. They send Theraxl a message.” He took one step toward me and was in my personal space. He looked down. “Your people must mean something to my Holy Goddesses. It is my duty to protect you from my Queen, the Ikma Scabmal Kama. She will attempt to kill you, after pulling your entrails out through your navel and tying them in knots around her fingers.”
I swallowed.
“To your ship now. May your technology work its healing wonders in your blood.” He leaned close to my face and stared at me. “I do not like how the illness dulls your eyes.” Then he snapped his helmet back on and scooped me up. He ran.
I mulled over my dreams and the things Hivelt had said. My fellow mining engineers did not practice religion or spirituality. Having grown up with the Spirits of my people, I was comfortable dealing in such philosophies. I accepted my dreams as part of my soul. Often, I took a meaning and applied it to my life. I did not broadcast my beliefs but held them sacred to my heart.
Hivelt’s culture likewise embraced the acceptance of deities in their lives. Whatever the dreams might mean, I was glad to have an ally, a friend, to help me.
“Pattee, wake to me.”
My eyes sprang open. I couldn’t believe how I had slept in his arms while he ran through the woods, but I attributed it to the severity of the infection.
We were in the forest near my snares.
“What is it?”
He pointed to the glade.
A pack of five dire wolves gnawed on the bones in my glade.
My fists clenched and my heart raced. The vicious predators that took down dinosaurs like they were hens played among the bones between us and my ship. VELMA could not make the antidote in my suit. I needed to be in the EEP.
Tracked on Predator Planet (Predator Planet Series) Page 14