Of a Note in a Cosmic Song; Part Three

by Nōnen Títi

  “It would be a little too ironic to come all the way to this planet only to get killed by an angry swarm of DJar bees,” Maike said.

  “Maybe they want revenge on us for bringing them here,” Leyon said.

  “That’s stupid; they weren’t even bees yet when we were on SJilai,” Laytji replied.

  “Maybe they’re just hungry,” Kintji suggested.

  Remag didn’t think so: They had a food source somewhere, since they had multiplied since the storm. “There must be at least twelve mas in that cloud,” he said.

  “So what do they live on if Kun DJar has no flowers?” Laytji asked him.

  “If I knew that, I would be a lot happier.”

  Maike left them to discuss it and caught up with Aryan. He didn’t acknowledge her, stubborn old fool, but he looked good – as good as he always had; he was the only person whose appearance hadn’t changed since leaving SJilai. The rest of them had lost their DJar looks, their clean and well-fitted clothing, their designer haircuts and make-up. Aryan had never bothered with any of the pretences: He was what he was and didn’t care what people thought of him.

  She elbowed him to get his attention. He still had to feel something. Ever since that trial he’d known most of what she’d kept from him, but not before that. His words at that initial quarrel had been accidental. Provocative, maybe, but he hadn’t known; she’d realized that the moment he ran from the courtroom. Since then he had avoided her as she had him prior.

  “Are you going to keep silent all through this expedition?” she asked.

  He mumbled something under his beard. She pushed him again, hard enough so he had to side-step. She wouldn’t mind a little tussle to put things right.

  “Stubborn old fool,” she said out loud. He didn’t give in yet, but she saw a momentary glimmer in his eyes.

  “Why does this planet have to display everything in such awful colours? What’s wrong with green?” Maike asked when the orange bulbous vegetation ceased abruptly at the foothills, making way for purples and blues in all kinds of forms, apparently without soil to grow in. Long thread-like purple pieces were draped over every rock, and small mushroom-like growths made it impossible to walk without stepping on them – which was a problem, since they could be animal parts, like those Remag had found in the orange fields. Other things were hanging down like vines or standing up like the starches, but none resembled trees or bushes or reached higher than the rocks.

  “We’ll make camp here. No need taking a risk with these unknown plants until daylight,” Kalgar said.

  “Do you think the river water is safe?” Wentar asked him.

  “Of course it’s safe. We’ve followed it all the way from town.” To prove his point, Aryan went to its edge and drank from his cupped hands.

  “You’re better off boiling it,” Kalgar said.

  “You go ahead and boil it; I’m not going to carry on with this expedition if you keep worrying about every little bit of unknown land.”

  Maike took the note from her pack and left them to quarrel, satisfied that they would never get through two kor together without problems. She was ready to read now, more curious than eager: Why would Thalo have gone through the trouble of writing her?

  She ignored the protests about her leaving them to set up camp. It was still light enough now, but in a little while she’d have no choice but to read by the fire where they’d all gather. That was, if they’d get a fire going.

  She found a small rock to sit on just inside the purple zone and turned her back to the others. A small piece of string was tied in a bow to hold the folded paper together. She pulled it loose. The handwriting was neat and even; not what you’d expect from a person in despair.

  Haslag said, if you make a fool of yourself in public, you pay for it in public, but I couldn’t do that. It wasn’t the belt. It wasn’t that I didn’t deserve it. It was being there; having to allow it. It was knowing all those people were watching. It was knowing how ridiculous I looked.

  I was made to be my own boss. I couldn’t be a user. I failed to see SJilai as a new chance. I was too angry at the injustice of DJar. I took it out on the wrong people.

  After that it was knowing I was a coward. Knowing, every time someone looked at me, that they remembered. It was easier to be in prison, away from those eyes, hoping Leyon would succeed the next time he tried.

  I cannot come back. I do hope your colony works out okay, but the way I see it, as long as there are people, there will be a struggle for power. As long as there is a system that offends people’s intellect, they will turn around and kick someone else. As long as the moral values of one group are imposed on others, justice cannot exist. I don’t blame you. I only blame myself.

  The words came to a sudden stop at the end of the paper. Nothing was written on the back. Maike folded it back up and retied the string. Thalo had previously made it seem that he couldn’t care less what people thought of him.

  She stood up from the rock and tugged her pants to straighten them. It was too late to wonder what would have happened if she’d avoided a public display.

  It was nearly dark. A pathetic little fire was burning at the centre of what was supposed to be their camp and each person was sitting on his or her mat. Both Aryan and Leyon watched her put the note into her pack. She knew what Leyon was thinking, but Leyon was a boy; Thalo had been a grown man.

  She let her eyes meet Aryan’s. He turned away. Why did men have to be so difficult?

  “Have a drink. The night will be short,” Kalgar said.

  The night wasn’t short for Maike. For the first time since SJilai, she could not sleep.

  Sugar High

  Aryan threw down his pack on the spot Kalgar had chosen to spend the night and kicked a small rock. It rolled away from his foot and started tumbling down the slope. Below him lay a huge flat that reached to the horizon. Way in the distance had to be the mountain range that divided the continent. Between it and the hills they’d just crossed, the land was yellow.

  “It looks like grass,” Wentar said.

  “So did everything else, at first sight,” Maike replied.

  “It looks like Kun DJar is a painter’s palette and the colours aren’t allowed to spill into each other,” Laytji commented.

  It wasn’t just the land, either. The sky kept changing its colour, though the changes seemed to be weather-related as roughly every station brought a different hue.

  They had encountered more yellows in the hills, most in the form of large, vine-like drapery that covered the rocks, but a whole field full was different and it looked as inviting as a soft bed. Aryan was itching to get down there. “I say we carry on. Both moons are out and the sky is clear. It won’t get dark. We’re wasting time.”

  “I don’t care,” Kalgar said. “We decided to walk by Kunlight and so we will.”

  Aryan kicked another stone. “‘We’? We decided nothing. You keep giving orders. You forget; I lead this party. It was my idea, my hunch we follow the river, and I say we carry on.”

  He’d had it with Kalgar’s directions. From day one he’d been irritated with his decision to come along: Aryan had thought up this expedition to get away from the boredom of town life and have a bit of an adventure, but there was no challenge with Kalgar cautiously planning every move. Aryan had wanted to take farmers, but now he was stuck with a bunch of kids and scientists who did nothing but stand still at everything that resembled a leaf or a bug to take samples. Kintji’s pack was full of them.

  He’d tried not to make a big deal out of it, not even about Maike taking that kid along. He’d put up with the endless discussions at night and with the jabbering of the girls around the fire, which was more effort than it was worth to get going in the first place. The light of the moons, had they used it, would have allowed them to have reached this spot days ago. They would have spread out their mats at night and gone to sleep still warm from walking.

  He hoisted his pack back up, ignored Kalgar’s repeated warning abou
t unseen dangers, and stepped around the rocks which lined the edge of the slope. It wasn’t as steep as it seemed and there were enough rocks to get good footing.

  “I’m still in charge of this colony and nobody is going down tonight,” Kalgar insisted.

  “Aryan’s right, though. So far we’ve encountered nothing that has harmed or threatened us in any way except the bees, and they were Bijari. There’s no reason to suspect it will be different down there,” Remag told Kalgar.

  “Besides, we’ll run out of food. Even if it takes us half the time to get back, we’ll be short of foodbars,” Maike said.

  “And everybody will be waiting for us with the trefin, and they’ll worry,” Laytji added.

  “Regardless of all that, we will play it safe,” Kalgar insisted.

  Aryan steadied himself and half turned. “Seems at least four of us are going down anyway.”

  “I’ll come,” Leyon said, and made a move to put action to his words, but he was stopped by Kalgar.

  “Nobody goes down there tonight.”

  Aryan turned his back and continued downward. There was no way he’d take orders, and it would be peaceful to be alone for a change. He only looked back again when he heard footsteps behind him: They were all coming, one behind the other.

  Aryan carried on until he reached a flat area where the stream flowed. “We’re halfway down; a compromise,” he told Kalgar, who was the last one to reach the spot, and without a word started to arrange his mat for the night.

  They had just settled down to go to sleep when Wentar got one of his sneeze-attacks. The man didn’t sneeze twice as a normal person would; no, if something irritated Wentar’s nose, he sneezed fourteen times. Aryan had counted them. Not long after the farmer went quiet there was a screech from the girls’ side. “Take it away!”

  Immediately the others were up to deal with whatever had scared them this time. The hills had been crawling with little critters of some kind, and the girls didn’t make a secret of not liking them. Aryan stayed on his mat; they didn’t need him there.

  Leyon was back first. “Don’t worry, it’s gone already. Just one of those harmless blobs.”

  Aryan threw the water container at him, but missed. “Go to sleep.”

  But it was he who couldn’t sleep. Some harmless blob! Why didn’t it crawl onto Maike’s mat? Damn her for taking that boy. Aryan longed to talk to her; longed for her laughter, her body. She was so close and yet so inaccessible. Originally, he’d been glad she’d come, but she was always with Leyon, who should have been working his butt off in town while Thalo was at sea.

  Yet at the same time it was Leyon who contributed to the trip in a positive way: Skinny as he was, he carried the water, he started the peat burning for fires, which nobody else seemed to manage, he didn’t moan about being cold or tired, and he’d found things they would have otherwise missed – a tiny puddle on the ground, which couldn’t be from rain, because it had not rained. On closer inspection, Remag and Wentar had decided it wasn’t water at all: It was a living creature, which moved along as if in liquid form. Next Leyon had stumbled over pudding-like protrusions which shone in the dark; bioluminescence they wouldn’t have noticed if Leyon hadn’t gone wandering. He had also stopped at a small hole between two rocks that emitted gas with jellyfish-like masses floating inside it. He’d even caught one in a small net, only to get a mouthful from Kalgar because the gas could have been dangerous. Though Aryan had secretly enjoyed Leyon being berated, it was the boy who brought the only excitement.

  It was hard to know what to say to Maike anymore since that stupid trial. It angered him that she’d never told him she’d mastered that challenge while he slept with Gabi. He had dumped Gabi since, but he felt he’d been made a fool of. He wasn’t going to beg or say sorry. If Maike thought it was nobody’s business then fine, but Benjamar had known about it. The whole idea was upsetting in more than one way: She’d not needed his help. She’d resorted to literally beating them until they listened to her. He couldn’t sympathize with that.

  Yet it was exactly that which kept him awake night after night, as it did now. He tried to concentrate on the sounds around him, but apart from Wentar’s nasal inhalations there was only the distant rumbling sound made by the hills – a sound they had first mistaken for thunder. Its rhythm only increased Aryan’s longing, knowing Maike was on her mat, knowing what she’d done, imagining what that would have been like. It was impossible to erase the picture from his mind, or to ignore his own body, so he let his hand do the work, satisfied that his companions were asleep.

  After a while, the image blurred and was replaced by a much grimmer one and what should have been a high became a low, tonight no different than all previous ones.

  They reached the yellow field about two hours after Kunup. Most of that time had been spent having breakfast, though nobody was ever hungry. Still, common sense told them to eat to keep their energy up, just like it was common sense to get enough rest and to be cautious before walking through these high grasses.

  It wasn’t grass like on DJar, but close enough: Hollow blades of some kind of vegetable matter, but stiff, standing as high as Aryan’s hips. Leyon, who was the shortest, had scared them half to death by jumping out from beneath the surface when they first entered the area. Unlike the rest of them, Kalgar had not been amused, his pride still hurting from last night, and had berated Leyon once again. Unimpressed, Leyon had then pulled out what he’d found: a bulging tuber-like root. It took the rest of the day for the experts to determine that this was a true plant, be it Kun DJar style, and it would not harm any creature if pulled out. So they’d cleared an area large enough for a camp that would be home for a few days. It felt like being in a tent with the vegetation reaching over their heads when sitting down.

  “It’s cosy,” Flori said as she and Maike cut up the pulled tubers; they wanted to try cooking them. Aryan watched them work from his mat. Kalgar and Leyon had started a fire using the outer fibres of the tubers as kindling. The other two girls had gone with Kintji, Remag, and Wentar to check out the extent of the fields.

  “How about you collect some water?” Kalgar said to Aryan, straightening up from where he’d hunched over the small fire. He pointed to the stream, which disappeared into the rocks at the bottom of the hill they’d come down from.

  “How about you go yourself? You keep ordering me around. First you take over my expedition, and now I’m only good enough to carry the water?”

  “I am not giving orders. I was just trying to get everybody involved in what needs doing. If you don’t want to get the water, I’ll ask someone else,” Kalgar said.

  But that was exactly the problem. Aryan stood up from his mat. “No, I will. This is my mission. Leyon, go collect the water.”

  “Go to hell,” Leyon said, and left the clearing.

  A small smile was on Kalgar’s face. Aryan had to squeeze his fists inside his pockets to prevent them going off by themselves. The last thing he needed now was to end up biting the dust in front of Maike.

  “I shall go and get the water,” Kalgar said, and picked up the container.

  Maike didn’t make a secret of her annoyance.

  “What are you looking at?” Aryan demanded.

  “The transformation of a grown man into a little kid,” she answered instantly.

  “Damn you too.” He didn’t need her approval for what he did or said; he didn’t need any of them. He turned around and walked away.

  He stopped and turned back when a piece of tuber hit him on the head. She stood with both hands full of them, ready to attack again, challenging.

  Okay, he wasn’t about to let this opportunity go. He pulled a tuber out of the ground, as they came easy, and flung the whole thing into her direction. “Get out of here,” he told the young nurse, while avoiding the ammunition from Maike’s side.

  Flori ran. Now the campsite belonged to the two of them. Before Maike could throw away all of their meal, he got a hold of her and forced her t
o drop the pieces. The heat of her body between his arms drove his strength and he had her on the ground faster than he could have hoped for. She fought like a madwoman, but he could feel her muscles tighten under his own and her eyes were laughing, now a more beautiful green than ever. Then she suddenly stopped. “We’ve got company.”

  Aryan heard the voices behind him. “Damn.”

  The five people who’d been for a walk had returned and stood hovering at the edge of the clearing. Aryan was in two minds about whether to tell them to get lost as well or take Maike somewhere quiet. Now that he’d been this close, he could no longer ignore the burning.

  “Guess what we found?” Laytji said.

  By the time Aryan had recognized it as honeycomb, Maike had pushed him out of the way and jumped at it. “Is it real?”

  Remag opened his pack to reveal its contents. “You can wait a day to see if we survive, but I can’t guarantee there’ll be any left.”

  The fight between Aryan’s loin and taste buds over who was the most in need only lasted for a fraction. Even if it had been the strongest of poisons, it was sweet. Real, sweet food for the first time in what must be six DJar years. It was a feast.

  In silence, they got drunk on sugar. No more need for bland tubers growing on a bland planet, devoid of tastes or smells – this was better than anything. Well, nearly anything: Maike was licking her fingers, her eyes shining.

  Nobody was in a hurry to go to sleep that night. When they were full, there was still plenty left for sweet tuber meals.

  “But why would they have abandoned the nest?” Kintji asked.

  “Let’s hope it’s a new adaptation: Drop nests everywhere and then move on,” Laytji said.

  “Between the bees and the fishermen we may survive yet, even if all crops fail,” Wentar said. “I heard that the kabin, which returned the day we left, has found real edible seafood. Shame they lost a man. Fell overboard, I think.”