“Strange that it is empty,” Kimbullettican says, still peering in over my shoulder.
Yes, it is. I had fully anticipated the light of the moon sliding in through the half-open door and illuminating what was left of the capsule’s lone escapee. All I see from where I stand is an array of simple controls, presumably all one would need to jettison the pod from the Vagantur. I take a step forward, leaning my head into the doorway. The air is stale, even as Faloiv’s oxygen seeps in and makes it new. There’s a single seat, empty, the restraint belts dangling, purposeless.
I can’t help it . . . all the fear is no match for my curiosity. I step through the doorway into Vagantur Capsule 3, ducking to avoid the few drooping vines that opening the door had disturbed. Kimbullettican leans in after me. It would be too crowded if we both stood inside, so they get as close as they can, head and shoulders inside the door, eyes sweeping this place of unknown. I can feel their excitement in the Artery, the first time they’ve actually felt my age: their fascination is bare and bright, eager to discover some bit of truth.
“It does not feel as old as it looks,” they observe.
They’re right. The dust and growths on the outside of the capsule give an impression of the ancient, but inside, apart from dust, the pod feels like it could be any unused room of the Zoo. The round transparent space is so similar to the domes of the commune . . . it’s like being in a shrunken version of N’Terra.
“I wonder if it was ejected from the Vagantur by mistake,” I ponder. “Since there’s no one inside, I don’t see the point.”
“A consequence of the crash, perhaps,” Kimbullettican says. “A malfunction. What is that? A compartment?”
There’s the faint rectangular outline of a compartment, a drawer of some kind.
Suddenly Kimbullettican’s shoulder is crushed up against mine. I cry out in surprise, moved roughly sideways by their presence in the pod. My backpack crunches against my spine.
“Close the capsule,” they say. “Quickly!”
I fumble with Captain Williams’s pin, still clutched in my left hand.
“Close it? I don’t know how!”
“Here,” Kimbullettican says, snatching the pin from my grasp. Their skin has taken on a mottled color, trying to blend with the silvers and whites of the capsule’s interior. They sweep a hand-paw over the slim bit of wall near the doorway.
“What’s going on?” I demand, moving farther away from the door, as far as I can before running into the dashboard.
“Listen,” they say, still searching for a place to press the pin.
I turn my eyes to the simple dashboard of the capsule, nothing labeled with instructions or clues of what the few buttons and levers might do. In my head, the Artery fills with something like static—a presence that isn’t fully a presence, choppy and unstable, a feeling like sickness permeating its aura. When I finally recognize the presence of one of Albatur’s creations, I turn to the dashboard, urgency pumping through me.
There are ten buttons. Two levers. I decide to press them all. None of the buttons do anything at all—whatever power source they rely upon is long dead. One lever makes a grating sound when I yank it, but nothing happens.
“Hurry,” Kimbullettican says, and I’m not sure if they’re talking to me or themselves, crouching now, looking for an indentation for the pin.
I pull the other lever downward, and the door that had opened only partially before now opens entirely. Kimbullettican jumps back, slamming into me.
“Again,” they order, and I shove the lever upward this time, a metallic clang echoing within the small space of the capsule.
The door stiffly, reluctantly, slides shut. There’s a hiss as whatever air between it and the world beyond is squeezed out.
“Be still,” Kimbullettican says, but I already am, frozen against the dashboard, my eyes prying at the moonlight beyond the transparent hull of the capsule.
“It’s from N’Terra,” I whisper.
“Yes. A similar creature to what harmed my sibling.”
The clouds drift over the moon once more, blanketing the meadow in shadow. The crush of jungle that borders the clearing isn’t visible as anything but a dense black barrier and I glimpse only snatches of the round blossoms that line the ground. Whatever the thing is that I sense in the Artery—its consciousness butchered by the work of Albatur—it is not visible from where we hide in the capsule.
There, Kimbullettican says, and I feel their energy pricked toward a place near the trees where I had first emerged, a dark shape that might have been the trunk of a long-fallen tree. I stare at it so hard my eyes water, hoping it doesn’t move, praying it remains a dead stump.
It doesn’t.
When it moves, every muscle in my body jerks; if it weren’t for my hands gripping the dashboard of the capsule, my body would have fled. But fled where? Kimbullettican and I are pressed shoulder to shoulder in the small space of the Vagantur pod, with no escape possible without going out into the meadow where whatever it is skulks. The transparency of the capsule is terrifying until I remind myself that from the outside, it is a smooth white shell.
It won’t be able to see us, I say in the Artery.
No, not see, Kimbullettican replies, and I shiver. I imagine my scent drifting through the meadow, a trail that the N’Terran beast follows with its nose to the ground. How much air is inside this capsule? How long will we be able to hide here if it discovers where we are and decides to wait us out?
It’s a gwabi. I sense Kimbullettican’s dread immediately, a gray cloud that enters the tunnel and swells like a bruise. A single vasana we might have been able to overpower if forced. A gwabi weighs five hundred pounds, and the teeth wouldn’t require implantation of dirixi fangs—they are born predators, but its biological laws have always prohibited it from hunting herbivores as prey. Until now.
It smells us, Kimbullettican says, but they didn’t need to: I know. The creature weaves a wandering path across the meadow, following exactly the trail I had walked when I had entered the meadow and seen what I thought was a boulder.
It is not here by coincidence, Kimbullettican says. It has followed you here from N’Terra.
How?
I do not know. How did you escape? Were you seen?
No, we weren’t seen, I say, racking my brains. It was dark: the middle of the night. My father helped us. . . .
My father had helped us escape. Every muscle in my body goes rigid, the pack on my back suddenly a thousand pounds weighing me down.
What is it? Kimbullettican says.
“My father . . .”
Crushing against them even more, I turn and rip the backpack off my shoulders, jerking open its top and shoving my arm inside. A canteen. The extra suit from Mbekenkanush. Loose strips of zarum. I slide my hands along every inch of the inside of the pack, searching for anything strange. My fingers freeze when they find it.
A tiny knot. So small it could be a stray stone stuck inside the fabric. But it’s not. I can feel it; round and perfect. Ignoring Kimbullettican’s discomfort, I turn the bag inside out, dumping everything onto the floor. The moonlight provides just enough light for me to find the tiny metallic bug, adhered to the very bottom of the inside of the pack.
“A tracker,” I whisper. “My father has been tracking us.”
“To what end?” Kimbullettican says, their eyes darting from the bug in my hand to the gwabi that prowls ever closer outside the pod.
“I don’t know,” I say. “He wanted me to go find kawa to bring back to N’Terra. He must have known I wouldn’t do it. He wanted to be able to track me so that he could come get it himself!”
Kimbullettican stares at me hard, their forehead spots congested in a knot near the center.
“Crush it,” they say.
I drop it onto the dashboard and with one slam of my fist send its delicate inner mechanisms scattering around the pod.
“I do not know how much good this will do us,” Kimbullettican says, their
spots still clustered. “We have already been followed to this place.”
The gwabi is fully visible now, slinking closer to the pod. Its blank eyes sweep over us, confirming that even if my scent is in its nostrils, the capsule is indeed still opaque from the outside. The creature’s mouth is slightly open, moonlight catching on the blaze of saliva coating its mouth. I think of the gwabi that had accompanied me from N’Terra after my mother’s death, my occasional companion. She never salivates this way. Another aspect of this animal’s nature that Albatur has made ugly and vicious.
The pod shudders as the gwabi’s shoulder butts up against it, and I grip the dashboard even more tightly. This capsule had fallen from the sky and landed here without so much as a crack; there is no way that this creature alone can smash it open like an egg. But that doesn’t mean it won’t try.
Being in the capsule, transparent from the inside, is like being in a bubble: I would almost rather the gwabi’s movements be invisible to me. Instead, my eyes are glued to it as it stalks slowly, jerkily, around the pod, circling. Even its languid grace has been stolen from its nature. It doesn’t move like what it is but as what N’Terra has made it.
Everything is changing, Kimbullettican says, but they don’t mean it for me. I feel rude for having heard them, as if I’d eavesdropped on some private prayer.
Time passes. My muscles cramp, crammed in the capsule and trying not to bump Kimbullettican with my movements. The dashboard digs painfully into my hip. And around the capsule, the gwabi circles. Around and around. Tirelessly, ceaselessly.
“Why does it not leave,” Kimbullettican mutters, and I almost jump at the sound of their voice, despite its quiet.
“The signal died when I broke the tracker,” I say. “It’s probably stuck here until it does what it’s programmed to do.”
“What is it programmed to do?”
I don’t answer.
“It is strange to fear a creature besides the dirixi,” Kimbullettican says quietly. “It is strange to not be able to reach her.”
The gwabi passes by the part of the shell closest to me and I flinch, as I do every time its slow, mechanical gait brings it past me. I avert my eyes, as if looking at it will pass some signal to the creature holding us hostage.
“I’m sorry” is all I can say to Kimbullettican. There are much bigger things they need than an apology.
I flinch as the gwabi passes by my shoulder, close enough to touch if the transparent barrier of the capsule were not between us. I shrink away as I had before, but this time it doesn’t continue on its endless circular path. It pauses.
Silence, Kimbullettican says.
I look into the Artery to see what the gwabi might be experiencing, but of course the connection is broken. I can only stare at its frozen form with wide eyes, waiting for those blank, fanged features to turn on the capsule and attempt to get inside.
But its eyes are on the tree line, its ears pricked forward, its nostrils quivering. It crouches almost imperceptibly. Despite its prime directive of tracking me, the creature does seem to maintain its instincts. Its lips pull back in a silent snarl.
“Rondo,” I whisper.
I see him first, and then Alma. They are two shadows, but I know him by the set of his shoulders and her by the shape of her hair, high and proud even in the near dark.
“Oh no,” I cry. “No! They can’t be here!”
I reach for the Artery reflexively before I remember they can’t be reached within it. Panic floods through me. Whatever barrier I have built between myself and them since we’ve been on this journey, it disappears in this moment. I can’t let my friends be killed. I reach for the lever, but Kimbullettican’s hand encircles my wrist.
“You cannot,” they say.
“I have to!” I say. “It sees them!”
It does. It has altered its course, the tracker leaving it listless. I imagine its prime directive glowing red in its mechanical brain: destroy. Alma and Rondo have stepped into the meadow, oblivious to what awaits them.
“Kimbullettican, move!” I say, trying to jerk free, but their strength is breathtaking, their grip unbroken.
“I will not,” they say. “It would mean my death, and yours, and possibly the death of the gwabi.”
“It’s not a gwabi anymore! Kimbullettican, move!”
Alma and Rondo have begun to make their way across the meadow. I don’t know how they found me: my footsteps, perhaps, or maybe they had seen me leave and trailed me like two shadows. I can tell by the way they move that they are afraid, but their fear doesn’t stop them from searching for me, and guilt and love throb inside me in tandem.
“They shouldn’t have come,” I cry. “They shouldn’t be here!”
Alma spots the gwabi. In the moonlight, the silhouette of her shoots out and grabs Rondo’s arm. It’s too late to run. The gwabi is faster than they could ever be. But there is another presence joining us in the meadow. Close and fast, glowing blue in the Artery. It appears suddenly, a blaze emerging from the jungle, heading straight toward my friends. My heart seizes: another predator. A faster death. But then the moonlight shifts.
Hamankush, Kimbullettican says at the same time that I see her.
She’s tall and straight-backed, carrying something in her hand as she crosses the meadow. Kimbullettican and I both sense her intention.
Do not, Kimbullettican says to her. The gwabi is ill.
I know this.
I can’t make out what she’s carrying in her hands, but it’s long and slim, like a cane or a walking stick. She grasps it in her right hand, holding it slightly out to the side of her body as she moves directly across the meadow toward Rondo and Alma. The gwabi sees her now and has turned fully toward her, its muscles twitching. The capsule shell is too thick to hear anything through, but I can almost feel the rumble of the beast’s growls in my own rib cage.
Caution, Kimbullettican warns.
Not feasible, Hamankush says.
When she’s close enough for me to make out her face, the gwabi leaps. An instant of fear pulses through the Artery from Hamankush, orange and almost dizzying, but it’s a mere flash that fades as she sidesteps the gwabi’s attack. I hold my breath, and Kimbullettican moves quickly forward inside the pod, both palms pressed against the shell that protects us.
You must not kill her, Kimbullettican says, their desperation a web of blue tendrils exploding from their words inside the Artery.
I will not.
When the gwabi leaps again, Hamankush sidesteps again, and then swings the long walking stick in a swooping arc. It connects with the beast’s skull, sending it stumbling sideways, discombobulated. It’s strange watching this in silence, the capsule deadening all noise. It feels like a dream. Kimbullettican’s fists are balled against the capsule, their breaths shallow.
The gwabi leaps a third time, and Hamankush’s walking stick cracks against its skull again. It’s enough. The animal stumbles sideways, then falls. It has only just slumped to the ground when Hamankush is upon it, withdrawing what looks like thin rope from the pack she carries over her shoulder and using it to bind the gwabi’s feet. Rondo and Alma stand frozen, as if unsure of what has just transpired.
Out, she says to us, and I merely stare for a moment until Kimbullettican nudges me, nodding at the lever. I pull it, and the air from the meadow whooshes in, a breeze that feels like love after the hour in the small cramped capsule. My friends come running the remaining distance of the meadow, their breath loud and shaking.
“Octavia,” Alma says, almost a shout. “What in the stars are you doing out here? What happened? You left us!”
“I know,” I say, and I try to follow up with I’m sorry, but I can’t. “I—I know.”
Kimbullettican rushes to the side of the gwabi.
“Unconscious,” Hamankush reassures them.
“These bonds will not hold her,” they say.
“No. Which is why we must continue on our way before it wakes.”
“Which i
s where?” I say, turning to her so I can avoid the eyes of my friends, who are staring at me like I have grown a new face, like they don’t recognize who I am. “What are you doing here? I thought you were supposed to stay at the archives?”
“I will escort you back to the encampment,” she says, nodding toward the part of the jungle I had come from. “I was summoned here to assist with human relocation. The Elders of Mbekenkanush have decided I am not responsible for the death of the igua. The igua that had been altered by the N’Terrans.”
I freeze, staring at her.
“So that means . . . they hold N’Terra responsible.”
“N’Terra is responsible,” she says, and I think again of the memory she had shown me in the jungle outside Mbekenkanush: war, brought by N’Terrans all those years ago. Drones. Death. And now here we are again.
“Yes,” I say. “I know. They . . . have made their decision.”
“Yes,” she says, and stares hard at me for a moment before she casts her gaze over the rest of the group. “Come, back to the encampment. I will explain to those who have been assigned to relocation.”
“No,” I say quickly. “No. We’re not going back to the camp.”
Her eyes snap back to me, her forehead spots clustering near the center.
“What?”
“I’m not going to let the Faloii deal with this while I go hide in the mountains,” I say. I wonder if my voice shakes or if it just feels that way.
“Octavia . . . ,” Alma starts.
“Stop it, Alma,” I snap. “You can go back if you want. I know you don’t understand. None of you do. You don’t hear what I hear. You don’t—” I pause, a lifetime of my father’s teachings like a dam in my mouth keeping me from speaking the words. “You don’t . . . feel what I feel. We were all born here, but I don’t know if you have chosen Faloiv as your home. N’Terra isn’t home. It’s just . . . a place.”
An Anatomy of Beasts Page 24