Chapter 9
At first, she couldn’t tell if a wrist-lamp was on or if the storm had finally passed, allowing the sunlight to seep through the forest. Uncurling her limbs, she stretched, feeling each joint click satisfactorily. She realized she was hungry. Y29 had yet to awaken. Tarak’s carrypack sat on the sandy cave floor beside her own, though he was nowhere to be seen.
Fishing through her supplies, she procured a ration bar (normally detestable) that she gobbled down greedily. How about some water? Meandering downward, the farther she went, the brighter the light became until she reached the forest clearing. A quick glance around revealed no imminent safety concerns. She climbed up a craggy boulder that helped her to reach a pledh fruit vine brimming with tempting clusters of bulbous, ripening seedpods. Sipping water collected on one of its leaves satisfied her thirst. Much to her enjoyment, the mid-cycle sun had heated the stone, so she leaned back to absorb the warmth.
“Pattie!”
She opened her eyes and saw that Tarak had emerged from behind a boulder on the opposite side of the cave mouth.
“I believe I have discovered something of interest. Come quickly. I would appreciate your input.”
* * *
Hiking a switchback trail carved out of the stone, Pattie followed Tarak into a smaller cave, not far from the larger one where they had spent the night. He activated his wrist-lamp, since Pattie hadn’t brought hers. At first, the cave resembled the larger one, but as they went in deeper, Pattie started noticing flashes of color, smoother walls, flattened areas that could serve as tables or benches. I am in a place of my ancestors, she realized. Her heart quickened at the thought. The path we walked to reach this place had not been worn away by rain—tools carved it.
Tarak paused, raised his wrist-lamp, and illuminated a wall etched and painted in colorful pictographs, the earliest written language of the Nasat. Once upon a time, she knew, these drawings would have been tinted in brilliant hues of green, umber, ochre, and indigo, the colors of rain forest plants and berries. Her trembling hand hovered over the etchings.
“This is astonishing,” she said after a long moment.
“I believe it is also relevant to our present predicament.” Tarak pointed the light on a section of pictographs and used his other hand to direct Pattie’s attention to the text he wanted her to study.
Her eyes flickered over the pictures: swaying trees; an anatomically perfect rendering of a Nasat, but lacking a mouth; clusters of plants with elongated, graceful leaves; ripples emitting from the plants; Nasat, prone on the ground, dead. More pictographs showing destruction. Like Tarak, her knowledge was imprecise, but she, too, could discern a narrative. “This looks like a war,” she muttered.
“To me also. It appears the Nasat of long ago were engaged in a great struggle.”
She looked up at him. “How far back do these date?”
“Sensors put the paint decay at about seven, perhaps eight hundred years.”
Before the maps. Before the promises made by kindred past.
“Who were they fighting? And where did they go?”
“Perhaps they have not gone anywhere, Pattie. Perhaps they are among you still.”
Her mind raced through the possibilities. Promises made. A boundary. She paused. When factions made war on each other, one of the most oft-disputed causes was territory. Depending on how the conflict was settled, the victor either claimed all, or a treaty dividing up territory, equipment, and resources was agreed to. In the case of the Federation’s relationships with her Alpha Quadrant neighbors, demilitarized or neutral zones were established to prevent further altercations.
The realization struck her. What if my ancestors established a neutral zone and my generation has violated the agreement?
What if we are at war?
Frantically, she scanned the pictographs, searching for clues to their foe’s identity, if indeed, a shadow from the past had once again emerged.
A lost tribe of Nasat, living deep in the uncharted quadrants of the forest? Or perhaps an alien species that once coexisted with the Nasat, but had become extinct, or abandoned this planet for another? She reviewed the pictures repeatedly. Nasat. Tree. Plant. Death. The ripples. And the drawing of the Nasat without the mouth. A mute Nasat.
A quiet.
Among the thousands of pictographs on the wall, not one of the Nasat depicted among the dead had been mute. Somehow, the quiets had played a role in this conflict, she decided. A split second later, she shook her head, dismissing her own illogical reasoning. Of what use would a shell that couldn’t communicate be in a war?
With an enemy who didn’t use language.
Snippets of images and sounds fired rapidly, blending together in a soup of confusion. A high-pitched hum coming from deep in the forest. A rustle in a bush. The sense of being watched. A cold, dry arm wrapped around her throat.
Hot…wet…rain…run…fear…dizziness…trance…
A throbbing ache began in her neck, and she dropped to the ground.
“We have to find the others,” she whispered. “They won’t see them coming.”
Chapter 10
She had done all she knew how to do.
Her relief at seeing most of the team members safely returned to base camp had been quickly supplanted by frustration. In light of her discovery, she had pleaded with the team commander to call for reinforcements, or at the very least, begin the trek back to the observation platform where it might have a safer base. They might have to hike through the night, but considering what they risked facing if they remained on the forest floor, the difficult trip would be worth it.
D6 was unmoved by her arguments. “Pictures on cave walls and old maps?” he clicked derisively. “I have an enemy I can track. Following the trail deeper into the forest will bring us closer to the toxin’s origin. That’s why we’re down here, P8.”
“Do you even know what you hunt?” Pattie asked, chasing after him while he unpacked the weapons locker. He slapped phasers into the pincers of every Nasat on the team while she stood by, watching helplessly.
“We don’t always have the luxury of knowing the face of our foe,” he said.
“But I do know what we’re searching for. At least I think I do. And we’d do better to—”
“We stay where we are. At dusk we go deeper into the forest. Come with us. Stay behind. Skitter like a little nymph back to your nursery. The choice is yours,” he said, “but keep your crazy ideas to yourself. I don’t want you panicking the others.” In his hands, he held a plasma clipboard where he’d outlined the night’s journey, having traced the previous night’s efforts with a stylus. Pattie saw that the team would be nearly fifty kilometers from base camp if D6’s plan went smoothly.
Too far to escape to the township.
Too far to retrieve protective gear.
Too far to defend themselves if they came under unexpected attack.
Pattie’s head had ached since they left the cave; confronting D6’s stubbornness only magnified her suffering. As long as the throbbing pain had persisted, she couldn’t think or reason clearly. She talked with Tarak about what to do.
D6 had given them permission to leave, though they would have to reach the observation deck before they could call for an emergency beam-out. Flash flooding during the previous night had brought down many trees in the base camp area, including one that had crashed into their equipment storage. Because D6 had no intention of calling for additional support or an emergency beam-out, the communication unit, along with power generators and computer monitors, had remained buried beneath a half-ton of tree trunk and branches. She had lost her personal communicator and her combadge. Y29’s was buried in the quicksand bog, and Tarak had used the transducer in his to repair a damaged neural shielding device.
And they had concerns about what would happen if the other team members saw them breaking away from the group. Pattie wouldn’t be able to offer an explanation of their behavior without violating D6’s order to avoid
involving the others.
The three of them were on the verge of making their decision when the last vestiges of natural light guttered, almost imperceptibly at first. As if a dark cloud passed over the setting sun, a strange, syrupy half-light enshrouded them, gradually dimming until dense grayness swallowed them whole. And the ache…
Pattie hadn’t known she could remain conscious and endure such relentless pounding. If only it would go away. She had cradled her head in her hands. A sharp pain stabbed through her forehead; she collapsed on the ground.
Above her, the leafy ceiling dropped, pressing down.
On every side, gaps of light between trunk, root, and bush filled with opaque black-green.
They had come.
* * *
A low, dull hum pulsed and it was as if the forest had fallen silent at the command of the invader. Words slipped away, her voice muted; Pattie wondered if she would forever after live in this place of silent, wrenching pain or if this enemy would take pity on her and end the suffering.
From where she lay, Pattie watched Tarak dive for his carrypack. He fumbled for his neural shielding. The hum sharpened, became louder. He pressed his hands to his ears, reflexively curling his legs and arms close to his body. Other Nasat looked on helplessly, paralyzed, teetering and wavering where they stood. D6 reached for his phaser but gave up when the piercing sound became too physically painful to withstand. He tried raising trembling limbs to cover his ears but his pincers locked up, frozen. Drooping, he fell and reflexively curled into a ball.
I can’t just lie here and not do anything. Pattie willed her pincers to move. Down. To her side. Where her phaser was hooked to her belt. The excruciating effort took every ounce of strength she had. She found the safety. Deactivated it. Each draining movement took a lifetime. She maneuvered the weapon out to the side, pushing it across the dirt. Tilting it up, she aimed for the trees.
Flame erupted, crackling and smoking. For a brief moment the humming stopped. She fired again, and again, until the perimeter branches flickered yellow-orange. She took advantage of the respite to scramble to her knees so she could face the assault head-on.
She saw them for the first time.
And yet not for the first time, for she had seen them etched into the cave walls. Long, gaunt leaf-limbs, rippling frenetically, their oozing, pseudopod-like feet propelled them forward. She didn’t need to see the ground beneath them to know they left pools of toxin in their wake. Her ancestors had not named these creatures; they had only waged war with them. Through her pain, she sensed their fury and saw evidence of it: the skeletal remains of a Yellow, desiccated and thrown aside. Another terrified shell was plucked from a hammock, tossed into the air, and bounced across waving limbs until he vanished in a whirl of green.
Once again the hum rose, this time a rhythmic, wordless chant. They closed in, surrounding the base camp. She knew all chance of escape had been lost.
An agonizing sting ringed the circumference of her head. Dropping her phaser, she stumbled forward, clutched her limbs tight against her shell. The noise pushed into her ears and vibrated her eyes, invading each fragment of her consciousness. She resisted, but her will wavered as the assailant pressed on.
A hand touched her lowest limb and she looked down to see Tarak, who had crawled along the ground. He touched her. She sensed a flash of telepathy. Dropping down where he could better reach her, she felt his hand fumbling on her shell. He touched her cheek.
Don’t…resist…them.
But I have to, she answered. Or they will destroy me.
Let them… he stammered…speak. Hear their voices.
She mustered a protest. They have no voice.
They have your voice. Listen.
Trust was instinctive between her and Tarak. He who had first given words to her thoughts and had known her. And yet in this thing….
She doubled over in pain.
Don’t resist them.
She yielded.
* * *
A flood of images washed over her. Prismatic light spinning through misty treetops. Slender leaf-arms opened to receive the beneficent warmth. Quiet groves near cascading water. And the light…precious light. Shadow falling. Traveling through the dark. And where is the light? They have taken it. The promise. They have forgotten. Take back what has been lost.
Shaking off the reverie, she came back to her own mind.
Their circle tightened; they squeezed in so close that she knew within moments she could face the fate of the Yellow and who knew how many other shells who had been plucked from their paddocks. The shells that had been devoured by a species starved for light, light that had been taken from them by the Nasat, who had violated their promise to never build beyond a certain boundary. We have betrayed them.
Reaching backward, she fumbled for Tarak’s hand. She found it: cold, limp. She pressed his fingers to her cheek and felt only dullness. How can I speak to them without Tarak? A thought bubbled up. An image of herself as a nymph shell. She had not touched Tarak: he had touched her. And she must do the same.
She took this risk or all of them were lost.
Weakly, she crawled toward the sea of black-green, uncertain whether they would even give her a chance. Their conflict was palpable. There were those who would destroy her as they had the others. Those who questioned her motives and were consumed with anger. Those, like her, who wanted answers. She pressed on. Extending a trembling limb, she reached toward them, willing one of them to trust her enough to reciprocate her risk.
One leaf emerged, unfurling tentatively.
They touched.
A questioning, frightened consciousness connected with Pattie’s. She projected her own fear to the alien. The fragile connection continued as the minds moved in wary circles around each other. Pattie learned their name: the Citoac. You are named to me, she said. The Citoac mind named her in kind.
She could not speak for the others, or her kindred in the township. So she spoke for herself; she imaged her sorrow for what her kindred had done. We have not known of your kind in hundreds of years. The memory has been lost, as has the promise that we would allow the light to pass through the canopy without interference.
The Citoac she touched wanted assurance that the light would be restored. She caught flashes of the others demanding immediate reparation. Some seething minds would only be satisfied with revenge. Pattie could not sense who would win this struggle of wills. I cannot speak for my kindred. I can only promise that I will speak for you. I will give you a voice so that this wrong to your kind can be undone.
A long, silent moment elapsed for Pattie as the Citoac shared thoughts among themselves, determining whether to trust her. She looked around the base camp to see what destruction had been wrought and was sickened by what she saw. If they rejected her…
A leaf-limb rippled toward her, touching her hand. Closing her eyes, Pattie opened up her mind to receive their images. Another curled around her forehead. And another, and still others until she yielded fully to an embrace of cool green.
She smiled. I am named to them. I am named to them all.
Epilogue
“Are you going to have time to help supervise the deck disassembly?” Zoë asked as the conveyor continued chugging along.
“I gave them my designs,” Pattie answered. She switched her duffel from one limb to another so she could better grip the railing. “Most of the paddocks can be easily integrated into other decks. The expansion wasn’t really necessary. More like, the township’s existing space needed to be allocated more efficiently. The forest quadrant builders can handle it.”
“I’m surprised. As an engineer, I figured you’d be jumping at the chance to rebuild the structure.”
“The engineering part is fine. I’m just in the mood to do something different for my last week here.” Since their return from the forest floor, she had felt like she’d spent more time in politics than she had in engineering. Making a case for the Citoac before the Planetary Council had
consumed every waking cycle she had until yesterday.
The Nasat indifference to history had made providing the background of the ancient Citoac-Nasat treaty challenging. She had beamed down to the cave mound with a Federation anthropological linguist and a Nasat loremaster to try to make enough sense of the pictographs to offer a narrative to the Council. Pattie had even transmitted them to Bart Faulwell—en route to Earth from an assignment he, Abramowitz, and Soloman had taken to Vrinda—for his input. Once all the pieces came together, a story, not unlike the softs’ fairy tales, emerged.
Together, they determined that the Citoac and Nasat had once had a protectorate-type relationship. A typically gentle species, the Citoac had no inclination to develop technology or civilization while the Nasat had been more assertive about colonizing the planet. Fearing that the Nasat would overrun their territory, the Citoac had initiated strikes against the Nasat. A truce was made between the two species, allowing the Nasat to build their townships without Citoac interference as long as the Nasat confined their expansion to a predetermined area. Requiring sunlight to maintain their photosynthetic processes meant that the Citoac needed the rain forest canopy to remain in a more primitive state. The Nasat had promised that the Citoac habitat wouldn’t be encroached upon. As time passed, the acquisition of technology and the advancement of knowledge dominated Nasat concerns. Maintaining ties with the past became less of a priority; memories of the Citoac faded. Once they became spacefaring, the Nasat joined the Federation’s destiny. That they had once had an obligation to a quiet sentient species had been forgotten.
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