Chapter 8
Actuality
The supplies were carried ashore together with anything else they could salvage from the now fast disintegrating raft, and they headed up the concrete ramp to make camp.
The top of the ramp gave way to a sand and pebble area with the forest some several hundred metres distant, so Glyn took out the radiation detector and waved it about over the ground to make sure it was safe. There was the gentle tick, tick which indicated the normal background count, and so the area was pronounced fit to make camp on.
A foraging party set off across the sands for the forest, to return later laden with fruit and nuts much to everyone’s delight. Meanwhile, Brendon had organized the building of a fire pit, a rectangular enclosure of rocks with a short column of carefully laid stones at each end to support a cooking pole.
Earlier that day they had caught a large fish, taking four of them to land it on the raft, and this was now skewered on a pole and left to sizzle over the hot coals of the fire.
That evening all agreed that it was the finest meal they had eaten since leaving the ship, and all they now needed was a local fresh water supply to complete their needs.
One of the men from the foraging party suggested that Glyn should come and see the trees in the forest, as they were unlike any that had been seen before. There were also some strange noises high in the canopy, but they couldn’t see what was causing them.
Glyn agreed that such things should be investigated and a party would go out in the morning to see what mysteries the new forest held. The guards were posted for the night, and everyone retired for a well earned sleep, only being disturbed once by a shrill screech from the depths of the forest.
As the sun crept lazily up over the horizon, the first meal of the day was consumed, and then the exploration party set off excitedly for the forest to see what it held.
Arki had brought his long cutting blade, and four guards with pointed poles formed the protection squad, not that they would be able to protect very much if they came across anything like a land version of the creature which had nearly overturned their raft, but no one was thinking too seriously about that possibility.
The first barrier to their progress was a thick tangle of dark green bushes intertwined with a very tough creeper. There were signs of where the foraging party the previous night had forced their way in, but most of the growth had recovered.
‘I think we should cut a way through this tangle, and when it’s dry, burn it. That way we should achieve a permanent pathway through.’ Glyn looked around for approval of his idea, but Arki had already begun hacking away with his blade. With Arki cutting and the others dragging the severed greenery out into the open to dry, it wasn’t long before they had a wide clear pathway into the main forest.
‘These are the trees I was telling you about,’ said one of the men, ‘what do you make of that?’ pointing to a branch which had obviously come from one tree and was now joined into a different trunk as though it had grown out of it.
Looking around, they could see that all the main trees were of the same kind, sharing branches one with another, forming a huge grid system of immense strength against even the most severe of gales.
Dotted amongst the joined up monsters of the forest were smaller trees, some bearing fruits, nuts or flowers, but they all seemed to be separate, growing in whatever clearing they could find amid the huge matrix of the forest giants.
The further they went into the forest, the taller the trees became, until eventually Glyn deemed it too dangerous to go on as the massive canopy overhead blocked out most of the light, and there were no fruiting trees for them to harvest anyway. A couple of ear piercing shrieks from high up in the trees got everyone a little edgy, and a hasty retreat from that dark and threatening part the forest ensued.
When they returned to the blazing sun of the forest edge they were surprised to find the scrub they had cut and laid out to dry had shrunk to half its size and was ready for burning.
‘I don’t understand this,’ said Glyn, ‘we haven’t been gone all that long, so how come all this greenery had dried out so soon?’ It puzzled all of them for a while, until someone discovered that the structure of the plants was such that once the stem had been cut, the internal fluids drained away quickly to be absorbed by other nearby plants or the ground.
‘Must be nature’s way of conserving moisture in the forest.’ Arki thought, as no other explanation seemed to fit.
After the midday break, the gang went out to the forest again, one of them carrying a blazing fire brand, and Glyn instructed the others to pull all the dried foliage back into the area they had cut it from in order to make sure that it didn’t grow back again in a hurry.
Once the dried material was in place, the flaming brand was applied, and they all ran back from what was almost an explosion, as the dried plants rapidly burst into vivid red and yellow flames, searing some of the still growing plants on the side of the pathway.
Within minutes the fire had died down, and the ground was blackened and smooth where the fire had been, not a vestige of plant life remaining.
Someone came up with the idea of building shelters to protect the group from any possible rain storms, although the skies had been a clear blue for days and not a cloud in sight. Glyn thought it a good idea as it would give everyone something to do, and they just might need a shelter one day.
Several days later, and after much hard work, a small village of living huts and two store sheds had been constructed with materials from the forest, and a palisade built around them to keep out anything which might fancy the inmates for a light snack one dark night, Arki’s cutting blade proving most suitable for the cutting down of small trees.
They gradually got used to the hideous noises which emanated from the forest during the hours of darkness, and although no one had seen any creatures, they were left in no doubt that they existed somewhere nearby.
The next two new arrivals took everyone by surprise, except the mothers, and even they were surprised by the seemingly short gestation period.
‘There’s something funny going on,’ Glyn confided to Arki one day, ‘these births seem to be coming along far too quickly, I’m sure it was never as quick as this on the ship.’
‘Know what you mean, I can’t explain it either, unless when on the ship we had a distorted sense of time. Maybe the ship needed to do that for some reason, although I can’t think of one offhand.’ Arki looked as puzzled as Glyn felt.
‘Oh, and we’ll have another problem before too long, and that’s clothing. How can we make cloth? So far I haven’t found anything from which to make the thread, let alone weave it. With all these children coming along, we’ll have to think of something soon.’ Glyn was beginning to feel that he couldn’t provide the necessary items they were all used to, and it was his job as leader to do that.
‘We’ll think of something.’ was all Arki could say.
The days raced by, more children were born, and the stockade reinforced after someone thought he saw an animal twice his size in the forest. Most made jokes about the mythical creature until they found several large clawed footprints near the stream from which they got their water, and then the stockade went up another metre or so, and armed guards fetched the water.
They were none too sure what part of the year they were in, but as the temperature kept going up a little each day, they assumed that full summer was approaching, and soon everyone was stripped to the waist.
A small boat made from a laboriously hollowed out fallen tree enabled them to go fishing in pairs, until one team returned with a tale of a super fish which nearly pulled them out to sea and then tipped the boat over, so they had to cut the lines in order to get free of it.
Glyn suggested another type of boat be made by lashing two boats together a couple of metres apart to give extra stability. Bigger fish were soon on the menu as the boat now held four people. A wide leafed plant on the edge of the forest provided the material for a usable sail, several leave
s being stitched together with split creeper strands.
Everyone enjoyed the sailing trips in the cool of the evening until someone saw a very large fish like object circling their boat. They put the baited line overboard to see if they could catch it, and the first half metre of the boat disappeared between a vast set of flashing white teeth.
After that, it was only the fishermen who sailed the sea for quite some time and had the necessary experience, were allowed out, and then only in pairs of boats.
The hunt for some plant which would supply them with a material to manufacture thread went on, but nothing was found which was soft enough to be made into cloth.
So far, no one had fallen prey to the creatures of the sea or the forest, but there had been a few near misses, and Glyn gave those unfortunates a fairly vitriolic tongue lashing to drive home the point that vigilance was of paramount importance at all times. With their present numbers, they couldn’t afford to lose anyone.
By what they thought was the approach of autumn, the last of the women had given birth and those who had produced the first children were well and truly pregnant again, including Mia, who was heading the field.
Glyn impressed on all that it was their duty to teach the children all they could remember from the ship days, as there were no books or other means of keeping a record of what had happened. The writing materials in the backpacks didn’t last long, and although they could be cleaned off and written on again, there was a limit as to how many times this could be done, and it was doubtful if the flimsy material would stand the test of time anyway, as far as permanent records were concerned.
Winter was hardly winter, it just got a little cooler in the evenings, and then they were into spring again, which was the point at which the great adventure had begun when they were forced to leave the ship, or was it? No one was sure, and few cared.
Glyn and Arki worked incessantly to make sure that everyone had a skill which contributed to the overall good of the group, and where possible, two skills were encouraged.
The occasional new item of food was added to their menu, and a large area of forest had been cleared using fire, the idea being to plant fruit bearing trees close to the compound, just in case something unpleasant was found in the forest and it curtailed their foraging until it could be handled.
The months went by, the seasons, such as they were, came and went, and the group steadily grew in numbers.
Glyn was still obsessed by what he considered to be a very rapid gestation period, and this was further compounded when he realized that the children were growing up at an apparently accelerated rate as well. Arki couldn’t or wouldn’t shed any light on the subject, although he had his own ideas on the matter.
As there had been no overt attacks from sea monsters for some time, an expedition set off to go along the coastal waters to see what else there might be a little further away.
They returned in due course with two new fruits and cuttings from the plants which had produced them, safely tucked away in a bed of damp moss and ready for propagation in the new cleared area at the back of the compound.
Although they were not strictly farmers, everyone grew something, and most had a skill which produced goods other members of the group needed.
By the time of the third round of births, the first was well developed and mimicking most things their parents were doing, apart from reproducing, as yet.
Mia’s third child was a girl, and it was then that the normally hard nosed Glyn melted a little, and became a great favourite among the children of the group.
He had wondrous tales to tell, most containing a nugget of information which would aid their survival in later years. He was still hell bent on education, in one form or another.
One expedition brought back several pieces of the shiny metal, which after being tested by Glyn’s radiation device, were seized upon by Arki whose cutting blade was getting thinner by the day, and new blades were fashioned complete with sturdy handles and a scabbard for protection.
A few more years went by, and the first generation were ready for partnering off to produce young of their own.
‘I wish I knew how the medic worked out the pairing for spreading the genes correctly.’ Glyn said to Arki one day.
‘Shouldn’t worry, if I were you,’ Arki replied, somewhat disinterested in the subject, ‘there’s enough of us now for nature to sort it out. I think you should let the youngsters chose among themselves, as long as it’s not between brother and sister.’ And the matter was closed for the last time.
There were several deaths among the oldest of the group over the next year or so, and it drove home the point to Glyn and Arki that although they were not among the oldest, their time for departure was coming up.
The group was now too big for the comparatively small compound which had been their starting place, and an expedition along the coast had found another suitable site only a few kilometres away which could easily take half the group to begin a new colony.
Glyn decided that it would be best for all if Arki took charge of the new group, and established it on the newly found site along the coast.
They would split the people down the middle on a voluntary basis, so that each group would have an equal mixture of young and old, and so it was done.
After the split, Glyn missed Arki more than he ever thought he would. There was no one else quite like him, no one else would stand up to his more outrageous ideas, and no one else had the ability to dust him off and stand him on his feet after taking a mental tumble.
Over the years, they did meet, taking it in turns to visit each other’s compounds and exchanging ideas, but it wasn’t quite the same again, and Glyn missed his old friend deeply.
It wasn’t that long before both groups needed to split again, and new clearings in the forest had been prepared and shelters erected in anticipation of the event.
Glyn now had to be carried around in a wicker chair on two poles, and it irked him terribly. He and Mia had produced fourteen children, the youngest five now having children of their own and just as keen as their father to make their mark on the world.
He still couldn’t reconcile the fact that gestation and the growing up process of the children took so little time, and as he didn’t have anyone to argue with now, he had to keep his thoughts to himself.
One thing he did do was to keep a record of the average heights of the children when fully grown, and the data he had accumulated caused him even more concern. Each generation was a little shorter and stockier than the previous one, but as the difference was only small from one generation to the next, it didn’t become apparent to the others.
Great efforts had been made to discover some means of making cloth, but there didn’t seem to be a plant with the right kind of fibres anywhere in the forest.
Some plants produced fibres which made very strong cords and ropes, but they were too course for fabrics, as the prospective wearers very soon found out.
Eventually the old clothes wore out, but by then everyone had got used to roaming about as naked as the day they were born, only the most elderly clinging to the remnants of the old fabrics to cover their dignity and anything they considered shouldn’t be on public view.
A few years on, and he was very frail indeed, and had to be waited on for all his needs. Just before his demise, Glyn sent a message to Arki about his latest discovery.
Using help from many eager hands, but keeping the information gathered thereby to himself, he had found that not only were the generations getting shorter each time, but they were also growing a little more body hair. It was very fine and toned in well with their golden brown suntan, but it was there nevertheless.
Glyn died in his sleep one night, a contented smile on his face as if he had solved some great mystery, sadly it was before the message came back from an equally aged Arki that he had noticed the same thing.
The human population of earth was taking off again, the groups splitting and penetrating further into the for
est, while some preferred to stay close to the coastline.
Without Glyn and Arki banging the education drum, as it were, the urge to educate the young had weakened more than somewhat, and the recipients of such teaching as there were, found it difficult to relate the little their parents taught them to the facts of surviving in the forest.
Forest lore went down well, was easily understood and could be applied to life. If you got it wrong, you usually didn’t get a second chance. Spaceships which weren’t what they seemed to be, and stories of an old earth long gone by were irrelevant, and didn’t stay in the memory for very long, and so the old tales died out, except for a very few persons who did seem to enjoy them.
The creatures of the forest hadn’t been exactly standing still while all this was going on, and some very strange and unpleasant ones had wandered in from afar, seeking a better environment or a new supply of food.
Unfortunately, some particularly nasty ones moved into the vicinity of one of the new groups, and they were ill equipped to deal with the new threat.
A frantic messenger broke into the old base camp early one morning with the news, and a veritable army of knife and spear carriers set forth at great speed to even up the odds a little, which they did admirably.
It was a pity that the creatures of the forest didn’t have the gift of speech, for if the story of the massacre had gone the rounds, they wouldn’t have troubled the humans again, but they didn’t, and they did, if you see what I mean.
As the years rolled by, the new generations had to move further into the forest, but this posed a problem.
The deeper into the forest they went, the darker it got at ground level, so there was a natural limit to the degree of penetration that was viable, until some bright spark suggested an alternative, that they move up into the levels just below the canopy.
The trees deeper in the forest were truly giants, and the massive branches which linked each tree to its neighbour made a very efficient highway for the new forest dwellers to travel on. Any threatening predators were quickly despatched and each new enclave kept in communication with its neighbours via the linking branches.
They didn’t have it all their own way. The forest was developing its own brand of life forms, and these migrated hither and thither as space and food supplies dictated, and occasionally there were clashes and casualties on both sides, but usually the humans won.
As each new generation matured, and the strongest members took up the senior positions in each group, the racial memory of their beginnings began to fade as survival necessities became of prime importance, only a few dedicated people passed on the old stories down to the next generation, and that was only to those who were interested.
The metal cutting blades so painstakingly wrought by Arki so long ago, began to wear out and eventually became useless, odd pieces of metal were found but the method of converting them into useful devices was long forgotten, and the finds became objects of mysticism, adding to the tales told by the elderly of bygone ages to entertain the young or anyone else who would listen.
The radiation detector lasted for a very long time, but what it detected and the significance of its signals were forgotten long before the solar powered regeneration and power storage system failed, which was a pity, as several groups wandered into areas of high radiation and subsequently suffered massive radiation burns and genetic damage, which led to their demise.
Any form of clothing had been discarded long ago, as the temperate climate suited the unclad figure, and was less restrictive of movement.
A few artefacts survived and were added to by finds from the old ruins of the pre destruction period, but their uses were beyond the comprehension of those who found them, and generally they were relegated to the safe keeping of the Story Tellers, which most groups seemed to have acquired.
The Story Tellers performed a useful service to the groups, as they studied the use of herbs and other useful gifts of the forest for the treatment of ailments and accidents, worked out methods of combating the more deadly invaders of a group’s area, and generally kept an eye on the mores of their enclaves.
The forest grew and gradually took over most of the land masses, new species appeared from time to time adding to the continual diversity of life on Earth, and a sort of stability was achieved.
Over a long period of time the humanoids changed to accommodate the ever changing environment, growing smaller in stature and acquiring a fine covering of honey coloured hair, as any form of clothing had been abandoned long ago. Little groups formed, each with their own story teller who treated the ill with the bountiful supply of herbs the forest provided, and kept a sketchy record of their history.
Nature, for want of a better word, rested for a while, allowing her new creations to find their own niches in the rich panoply of life which now pervaded the shattered remains of what so called civilized man had wrought upon the Earth, and although it would never be the same as before, it was surviving well, despite the differences.
As always, she would take her time before the next great thrust forward to populate the universe with sentient beings, whatever form they might take.
But generally speaking, those which survived the best seemed to be equipped with two arms, two legs, a trunk and a head, although what went on in the head was not always as predictable or reasonable as she might have hoped for.
Nature had one invaluable thing in her favour, time, and there was plenty of that.
To be continued in Greenways and then on in The Inosculation Syndrome - (Also
known as The Tribe by one publisher.)
*******************
Other books
By the same author
The Seed Garden.
Extreme Difference.
Exchange Rate
The Martian Enigma
The Single Twin
Transplant* (this book)
Greenways*
The Inosculation Syndrome*
The Sweepers
Inheritance
Of wood, Metal, and Glass
Enslavement
Flight of the Tristan
Divergence
Anthology of possibilities
Anthology of Futures
Light Quest
Intervention
The Power Seeds
Fully Guaranteed (A short story)
* A trilogy, each story is complete in itself.
Please read in sequence give above
About the Author
Retired Research & Development Engineer.
Interests:- Physics, Electronics, Chemistry, Renewable Energy Systems.
Also:- writing Sci-Fi and building an adult real-time 3D adventure computer game.
Back in 1998 I was commenting to a friend that I didn’t go much on so called modern Science Fiction. It didn’t seem as good or as interesting as the adventures stories written by the old masters of sci-fi – Clarke, Russell, Pohl, Asimov, Heinlein etc.
His reaction was ‘well, write your own then’ – As I already had an idea at the back of my mind, I did. After printing up ten copies and binding them (hardback) they were passed around among like minded friends – and then came the request for more of the same! Again and again. Only one problem – I was spending too much time printing and binding and not writing, which I enjoy.
Getting into ‘print’ is difficult – if not impossible – so I chose the ‘e-book route. I would recommend it to anyone who likes writing, and has a story to tell.
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