Omnipotence: Book I: Odyssey

by Geoff Gaywood

  The business done, the two men went on to discuss the evening’s entertainment. “You ain’t gonna believe what these Thai girls do!” said Chan, his ugly frown transformed into a weird grin.

  24

  The Safari

  The remainder of the first long night on Ceres was relatively uneventful. Half an hour after the lights had been doused nothing remained of the invaders except the grotesque carcass of the great horned beetle. The guards sat in the control room, monitoring the surveillance system, but saw practically no movement, although the fateful buzzing from afar persisted.

  By the time the sky began to lighten, most of the crew were up and about, keen to get on with the job of adapting the base to their surroundings. It was still far too cold to sit outside, so the conference room was converted to a breakfast/recreation area. When Henri arrived, copious unsolicited advice was offered on improvements of all kinds. One of the better ideas originated from the cook, who, between tirelessly delivering hot breakfasts, and with much gesticulation, suggested that they recover the parachutes from the Phase 2 drops and use them to make everything from blinds to tablecloths. This idea was later taken up with such inventive enthusiasm, and on such a scale that, before the day was out, the base had become colloquially known as ‘The Orange House’, a name that stuck long after the last traces of parachute fabric had eventually been replaced.

  Arlette had entered the makeshift breakfast room shortly after the cook had made his theatrical contribution, had taken a seat opposite Henri, and the two of them had quickly got down to business. “I’ll need better armament and more exploratory capability,” he told her. “We also need more foodstuff to tide us over until such time as we can reliably forage locally.”

  “What do we need to adapt the base for an effective night-time black-out?” Arlette asked.

  Henri told her about the planned use of parachute material. “I think there are benefits in having the crew down here busy on a project like this,” he said. “It gives them ownership and encourages them to be inventive. I’ve commandeered some sewing machines and I think you’ll be surprised and delighted with the results.” He emphasised the words ‘and delighted’ with a smile that told her that he really did want to delight her. She laughed. His English was reverting to its native Haitian charm now and then and it made her feel less alone. She knew she had to be careful, but right now she was enjoying the warmth he radiated.

  “OK,” said Arlette. “What other equipment are you calling down?”

  Henri gave her a list. An extension for the kitchen, a laundry, entertainment equipment, gardening and fishing equipment, food and seeds – it was all pretty mundane stuff. Armament and transportation to carry out extensive, safe exploration was, however, the most pressing need. They had to be able to feed themselves reliably and cost-effectively as soon as possible. Henri wanted to put the biologist and botanist expertise at his disposal to work, and he wanted to get Arlette out of her office and into an exploration truck, and he told her so. She laughed again. The place was buzzing. They were moving forward. She was happy.

  The Phase 3 drop arrived three hours after sunrise, and this time all three packages landed with pinpoint accuracy just beyond the perimeter. The appearance of the orange parachutes in the cloudless blue sky was greeted with whoops of delight from the whole company. When the packages had been recovered and opened, something of a Christmas party atmosphere gripped the base, with everyone craning their necks to see what goodies had descended from the sky for them. It seemed there was something for everyone, but the most popular toys were the gardening tools, the fishing nets and the sewing machines. They were dragged out of their packaging and put to work almost immediately.

  “Chuck, I want one of those anti-tank launchers mounted on the escort truck right away,” said Henri as the military equipment was rolled off its carrier. “We’re going to do a four-hour inspection tour to the east of the camp and I’ll need a driver and a three-man detail on that truck to take care of any surprises.”

  “Yessir!” Chuck Connolly was pleased with the prospect that their next encounter with indigenous wildlife would most probably be on their own terms, but he was cautious about exposing his men. He thought long and hard about how to protect the occupants in the back of the truck and decided to include a screen that could be fitted quickly if necessary. An hour later the personnel carrier and its escort were equipped and provisioned, and their batteries fully charged. Henri handed the driver an approximate route pencilled onto a high-resolution orbital photo and went to fetch Arlette.

  The personnel carrier could carry sixteen passengers in addition to the driver and an armed guard, but Henri had selected just six others for this initial foray. The objective was the location of potential food sources, so he logically included a botanist, a biologist, a doctor and a cook, but he also included the pilot and co-pilot of Lander 1, since they had very little to do at the base. As the little party pulled away, Henri stood and gave an impromptu intro, rather like a ranger on a Safari. It was of course very much focused on safety and security, but he couldn’t resist adding a stern “and no fraternising with the natives!” at the end. He sat down and leaned over to whisper in Arlette’s ear. “When we get around this wooded area, we should be able to see quite a sizable river. Could you please name it for us?”

  “What would you like to call it?” she asked him.

  “What about the Blue Loire?”

  “Too blatantly nationalistic. What’s the largest river in Haiti?”

  “The Artibonite – they’ll never buy it.”

  “Well, let’s wait and see if it has some distinctive characteristics we can hang a name on.”

  The view as they rounded the wood was glorious. The land sloped away to a broad, green valley and, beyond it, stretches of the river, reaching towards the distant mountains, flashed in the sun. Progress was, however, slow and it was getting hot. The red earth was rutted and strewn with rocks and thick with coarse cactus-like plants that were surprisingly resistant to their progress. Henri got up and went forward to the driver. “Make for that wooded area over there. It looks a bit flatter.”

  The trees, when they reached them, were much taller and leafier than those they had seen closer to the camp, and much richer in variety. The passengers stared into the gloomy interior as they began to make their way down the edge of the woodland, but nothing seemed to be moving and the complete absence of birds and the eerie silence made the place seem sinister.

  “Look at that fruit!” called out the cook, and following his pointing finger they could just make out what looked very much like a Christmas tree, decorated with red and orange packages, about seventy metres into the wood.

  “OK,” said Henri to the driver, “let’s go and take a look.” The personnel carrier and its escort ploughed in through the undergrowth, raising clouds of flying insects. “Chuck,” said Henri into the intercom, “double-check that your men have goggles on and no skin exposed.”

  The tree was weighed down with fruit the size of footballs and the air was laden with their sickly scent. “Chuck, have a man retrieve a couple of fruits and deliver them here,” said Henri, “and keep him covered at all times.” One of the detail jumped down, drew his knife and approached the tree. He selected a couple of fruits and removed them carefully, then turned and walked towards the personnel carrier, one under each arm.

  “Spider at two o’clock!” shouted Chuck.

  The man bolted around the carrier and leapt into the open door. The spider climbed slowly down from its vantage point in a neighbouring tree and crouched on the ground watching them, its limbs moving it very slowly forward, like a fox stalking a rabbit. It was about half as large as the one that had killed Spencer.

  “OK,” said Henri. “Let’s get out of here.”

  The engines whined and the two vehicles began to turn in a tight arc and head back the way they had come. The spider, however, was not appeased. It charged the personnel carrier, spitting yellow phlegm, then
leapt onto the roof, dashing its fangs against the bulletproof observation hatches.

  “Keep going!” shouted Henri and the personnel carrier ploughed on and out into the open ground, followed by the escort truck, with Chuck, grimly trying to keep the anti-tank missile targeted on the spider, bouncing around behind.

  “Halt!” said Henri. They halted. The spider stayed put for a minute or two, then it stepped delicately off the roof of the personnel carrier, now smeared with yellow phlegm, and made its way slowly back to the trees.

  “Bottle of water, anyone?” asked the cook, and everyone laughed with relief.

  Once it got underway again, the little convoy continued to hug the tree line as it made its way down towards the valley. The orange football tree became a more familiar sight, but it was the cook’s sharp eyes again that spotted crimson berries in a low bush just at the edge of the trees. This time the fruit was easily accessible and the passengers swarmed out of the people carrier to take a closer look.

  It was all the doctor could do to prevent them from being tasted on the spot. “Don’t forget that many of the wild berries on Earth are toxic to humans!” he said in a loud voice. “We will not be tasting anything we find before it is checked for poisons and pathogens!”

  They had barely driven another 150 metres when there were four or five shouts from within the cabin and arms pointing at various fruit-laden trees and bushes in a shallow dip just within the tree line. This time they took a much more extended break while the soldiers collected samples of everything that looked edible.

  Henri was checking the last passenger up the steps of the personnel carrier when he heard a low rumble that seemed to be coming from within the forest. Chuck had heard it too, and had instinctively swung his weapon around to the direction from which it was coming. Then they heard a different, much more immediate sound. Something very large was crashing through the trees and they could see the tree tops moving around violently as it progressed. It was not coming directly towards them but down the slope of the land in the direction of the river. Henri waved his arm and pointed, then jumped into the personnel carrier and they moved off in the same direction. As they watched through the trees they caught glimpses of a huge, yellow, eight-legged creature with massive clawed arms that were tearing small trees and bushes from its path as it ran. At its rear end five or six pointed tails were flailing around. Then, as they watched, it staggered and its outline blurred, almost as if it was melting. Its yellow colour deepened to a rippling red-brown. Henri blinked and re-focused his binoculars.

  “Mon Dieu!” he said. “It’s being eaten alive by ants!”

  The personnel carrier came to a halt and the passengers could see the drama taking place quite clearly some fifty metres into the forest. The huge creature, eight or nine metres in length and about four metres high, had lost parts of most of its legs and was grabbing and crushing its predators with its claws, while striking out and stabbing them with its pointed tails. Its attackers were the size of large dogs, some of them engaged in direct conflict with their prey while others were simply dismantling it and carrying off chunks of its flesh. As each one departed, or was killed, another was there to take its place. After about five minutes of this relentless carnage, the prey stopped moving altogether and its predators continued to systematically dismantle its lifeless body.

  “Well,” said Henri, “I think we have all seen enough of that. Let’s move on.”

  As the vehicle began to move, Tim Cochran turned around to the cook sitting behind him. “Wasn’t that awesome, Giuliano?” he asked enthusiastically.

  “Ye-es,” replied the cook with some reserve. “I didn’t mind the huge scorpion thing but those big ants are very frightening. There were millions of them. Imagine what it would be like to be hunted by them – you could never escape!”

  Tim’s instinctive attitude was to be gung-ho about taking them on, but he saw the trepidation in the cook’s face and felt sorry for him. “We’re not going to let them get you, Giuliano,” he said with a hearty smile, shaking the cook’s forearm, “and I’ll tell you how. First of all, we won’t allow any large animal, hunted or otherwise, to get close to the base where it might attract the ant-things. Second of all, Cobus Vermeulen is setting up a wildlife tracking system that will enable us to know just where they are, so we can take pre-emptive action if necessary. Nothing will be allowed to get near our cook, I promise!” and he gave Giuliano’s forearm another shake.

  The cook smiled weakly. “How are we going to stop large animals from getting close to the base?” he asked. “We weren’t too successful last night.”

  “Well, we won’t be making the mistake of lighting up the base at night again, so we won’t be attracting nocturnal visitors,” said Tim, adding enthusiastically, “and if anything does cross our electronic boundary, they’ll be blown to bits by Colonel Bertin’s new anti-tank weapons! See?”

  The cook gave Tim another weak smile. It crossed his mind that fragments of freshly blown-up animal might be quite attractive to a swarm of carnivorous ants, but he turned his gaze outside.

  The ground was becoming softer and darker now, and covered with low, leafy plants rather than the coarse bush higher up the slope. The forest began to melt away as well and it became apparent that they were on a flood plain, splashed with colour by numerous flowering plants and shrubs. The cook, ever vigilant for edible opportunities, requested a halt for a herb and vegetable hunt, and, as the party disembarked, they could hear the trickle of water in streams not far away.

  Mpho Mathe, the biologist in the landing party, was bitterly disappointed with the wildlife she had seen so far on Ceres. “It makes no sense that on a planet as well endowed as this one evidently is, that there is so little variety of species. Not only have we seen no mammals or reptiles, but everything we have seen appears to be invertebrate, despite the huge size of some of them.”

  Botanist Carla Da Silva was also perplexed. “I can’t get over the similarities with the vegetation on Earth. Almost everything I have seen looks like a variety of something familiar. Look at this.” She scooped up a pretty little purple-flowered plant with her trowel and freed its roots of earth. “It’s a bulb, in fact it’s a tulip, near as damn it.”

  “Yes, you’re right.” Mpho leaned over a broad-leafed plant and pointed. “See this pretty little orange insect with the triangular body?” She photographed it. “It’s just a modified spider. There have been creatures like this on Earth for hundreds of millions of years.” The two women continued their tour of the area, both hoping to find some form of life that they could classify as utterly alien. They were disappointed.

  They shared their views with Arlette and the doctor when they returned to the personnel carrier.

  “You know, from what we have seen, and more importantly have not seen, you could almost believe that life on this planet started from a microcosm of Earth life some 300 to 400 million years ago,” said Mpho.

  “I could buy that from the evidence,” added Carla with a shrug. “But it would suggest that this planet was utterly lifeless when this package arrived, and it then proceeded to evolve in a very Earth-like environment. But it is frankly incredible that nothing distinctly original evolved over that period of time. On Earth, the dinosaurs came and went, among others.”

  “Yes,” said Mpho, “that is bizarre, because it suggests these huge oceans made only a transient contribution to the evolution of life on this planet at best. We’ll probably need a fossil record to get an explanation.”

  Arlette pondered this for a while. “Well, the explanation may be astronomical, you know,” she said.

  The doctor nodded. “I was just reaching the same conclusion,” he said. There must have been some selective extinctions, and the fact that the insects survived suggests they were radiation related.”

  “Meaning what?” asked Mpho.

  “An extended period of gamma ray emissions from Omega 16? We don’t know anything about the history of the star – it could have dou
sed Ceres with radiation and killed every other living thing for all we know,” he concluded

  “And we don’t know anything about Ceres either,” said Arlette. “Perhaps the water arrived quite recently in a comet shower. And supposing your microcosm from Earth took the 200-million-year scenic route before it arrived?”

  “Yes, Commander,” said Carla, “there will be an explanation, but Mpho is right – the only place we’ll find it will be in the fossil record.”

  “Well,” said Arlette with a turn of her head, “sorry, but the sunhat and trowel stuff will have to wait a while because it won’t help us to feed ourselves. In the meantime we have what we have to supply the proteins, fats and carbohydrates we need to survive.

  “Carbs, and vegetable fats and proteins will be no problem,” responded Carla. “There are plenty of candidates around, and I don’t doubt that they’ll respond to cultivation. Animal fats and proteins may prove to be a little more difficult.”

  “Oh, I’m optimistic about that,” cut in Mpho. “We haven’t seen much topographical variety yet. If we extrapolate from the animals we have seen so far, we can expect to find some sizable Blattodea or similar in marshy areas.”

  “Blattodea?”

  “Yes, the ancestors of the cockroach family,” said Mpho with a faint grin. “They’re considered a delicacy in some parts of the world, lightly fried…”

  “Er, I’m sticking to lobsters, thank you,” said Arlette. “You’ll have to find us something that doesn’t require a huge leap of faith and can be farmed.”

  “Commander, we have two possible routes to follow.” Mpho was engaging her seriously now. “Either we take back some of the local plants to Earth and breed cattle that can feed on them, then bring a breeding herd back here, or we fence off colonies of local fauna in their natural environment and adjust to the meat products they can deliver. We were lucky with the lobsters; we may be lucky again.”

  “I can’t think why we wouldn’t take option one,” said the doctor. “It’s much less risky.”