The river flowed powerfully before them, masking the sound of what lay beyond an arched bridge: the source of the nasty smell. Hundreds of very young Threck thrashed wildly in a huge mud pit, jabbering and splashing and laughing.
ANGELA: Smells like the farm house … times an illion.
“This is the nursery,” Unhkte gestured.
Tom glanced around and observed that the mud pit was only a portion of the total area. They followed Unhkte up to the bridge’s highpoint, where she stopped once more.
She pointed to the mud pit. “There you have young, ten days to one hundred or more—I’m not confident of the specifics.” The bridge led to a low earthen wall that wrapped around the pit all the way to the city wall. A few adult Threck lounged on top of some sort of seats, like stools, and vaguely watched the young. “These are overseers. When old enough, they move newborns from the hatchery,” she motioned to a pool of still water about half the size of the mud pit, “to the mud, and from the mud, inside. Come.”
They descended the bridge and followed a gravel path to a walled structure’s arched entrance. Passing beside the dark pool of shallow water, Tom could dimly perceive the spherical eggs lingering at the bottom.
“I see you swayed Fetz,” someone said as Tom trailed Unhkte into the room.
Small torches hung from rafters, illuminating the area and reflecting off dispersed pairs of eyes. On the floor lay 30-40 mid-sized Threck, smaller than the Setkee Tom had seen, but bigger than the largest young in the pit. These young lay flat against the floor, mostly still, with their arms and legs spread out and overlapping each other. Overseers here walked among the children, pacing over them, gingerly stepping in the spaces between outstretched tentacles. Some of the young fidgeted in place, and eyes could be seen popping out to steal a peak. Many appeared asleep, their eyes remaining hidden in their sockets.
ANGELA: Awwww!! How cute! Bed time!
“Tom and Angela,” Unhkte said. “Earlier you met Dowfwoss Towtzaw, leader of Nursery group, in the council chamber.”
Towtzaw stepped from behind a table. “Welcome to my nursery, Syons People. As you recall, I was not howling among the afraid.”
“Yes,” Tom replied, having no idea who was whom in the meeting, besides the few he’d come to recognize. “Thank you.”
Unhkte continued, “Towtzaw comprehended as I did that your comments were not intended as threat, but simply due to ignorance.”
What to say to that?!
Tom scrambled.
“Truly a misunderstanding,” he submitted. “Absolutely no threat.”
“Of course,” Towtzaw said with a [dismissive] gesture. “Unhkte has shown you the hatchery and pit, I infer, and now you look upon the laying Sootskee.”
“Stop!” an overseer yelled, and kicked one of the quivering young.
Zero reaction from Towtzaw or Unhkte.
“You, stop!” from another overseer, who then plucked a long curved rod from the wall and thwacked a child in the head.
ANGELA: WTH? They’re kids!
TOM: I know. Just don’t say anything. Please.
“As you see,” Towtzaw resumed. “This is where Sootskee are prepared.”
“I have a question,” Angela said via her Livetrans. Tom grabbed her wrist and glared at her. “For how long must the young be still like this?”
“It varies from generation to generation,” Towtzaw replied. “Typically, no less than eighty days; no more than two hundred. Individuals incapable of preparation after so long are disqualified from keepock.”
TOM: Don’t say another word. Step out if you need to.
“Eighty days?” Angela wasn’t done. “This is how you treat your own people? I can’t imagine what lesson a person learns from beatings and from being prevented from even moving.”
TOM: Walk away, Angela. I’m begging you. You’re alienating our only advocates.
Fortunately, in her rage, Angela wasn’t even attempting to deliver associated gestures. No emotion was conveyed. To Towtzaw, Angela’s comments were purely academic.
“Is it not obvious?” Towtzaw replied. “They learn to be still.”
Tom closed his eyes.
Crapshake.
“Thank you for showing us the Sootskee,” Tom interjected, anxious to get Angela out of this place. “Best wishes with the current generation.” He turned and pushed Angela out the door before whatever tirade she was surely writing spat from her PA.
Though oblivious, Towtzaw seemed intent on twisting the blade. “Significant leniencies compared to prior generations. Since retiring spiked prods, young Threck no longer wear the scars of prior generations.”
“No such fortune for you or me,” Unhkte said to Towtzaw, and ran a palm over her own faint keloid scars. “Are you certain about tonight? They’re prepared?”
Unseen by either Threck, Tom slapped Angela’s visor shut and pinched the PA speaker on her sternum between thumb and forefinger. He could feel in his fingertips the vibrations from her muted rant. His eyes pleaded as she yelled at him, her visor relegating her voice to a faint babble.
He fired off an M.
TOM: Do you HONESTLY think a foreign species can change a civilization’s age-old practices by yelling at them? Control your emotions!
Unhkte stepped out of the doorway and looked at Tom, who held Angela behind his back.
An alarm whistle screeched from up high, in the distance. Unhkte looked to the sky and listened. It sounded as if it’d come from the top of the tower. The overseers at the mud pit shouted commands and sprang in with the young, who quickly quieted.
Towtzaw emerged from the doorway, bronze-tipped spear at the ready. She surveyed the nursery area. More whistles screeched in the distance.
“Where is it?” Towtzaw asked as more nursery workers appeared from somewhere at the end of the water pool, torches and weapons held out before them.
Everyone grew still again, waiting for more alerts. Finally, three toots sounded from the tower, followed by the same note, but prolonged a few seconds.
ANGELA: What’s happening? Pablo and Zees coming to get us? Aether and Qin?
Towtzaw and Unhkte appeared to relax. The other Threck, too, lowered their weapons and turned back from whence they came.
“The harbor,” Unhkte said to Tom. “Only small number of raiders. Nothing for us to fear. Let us be off to our final—”
Towtzaw interrupted. “Is it prudent? Perhaps tomorrow instead?”
“We cannot keep them here overnight,” Unhkte replied. “We must show them what they need to see, and send them back to the farms.”
Tom looked at Angela and saw in her expression the same relief he felt. He released her and she remained quiet.
Towtzaw signaled reluctant acceptance and returned to her room.
Unhkte turned back to Tom. “Now we go to the sacred place. At the path’s fork, I will signal you to begin silence. There can be no distractions for the prepared Sootskee.”
“We understand,” Tom said, set his gaze on Angela, and followed Unhkte back to the bridge. His gut felt heavy and taut. Never one to hold her tongue in the presence of a perceived outrage—even relatively minor wrongs—Angela was especially triggered by abuse of children and the defenseless. What if the next step in the Threck brand of child rearing was even worse than the last?
* * *
A pair of city guards accompanied Unhkte, Tom, and Angela beyond the northwest gate, outside the main city wall. One walked ahead of the group and the other picked up the rear.
Walking across one of the great mossy fields that surrounded the city (“parks” to the station crew, but cleared by Threck city builders purely for security), the party entered the jungle through a pair of seemingly random shrubs. Inside, the vegetation appeared unmaintained and untrodden, sparking a fresh bubbling of anxiety in Tom’s gut.
After a few stream crossings, the guard behind Angela spoke up.
“Will we guards be allowed to observe the keepock ritual as well?”
Unhkte’s motions indicated annoyance. “You will be present, but your attention should be on your duty, should it not?”
“Of course, Dowfwoss. Duty for certain.”
Instead of a translation appearing for the term keepock, a link to the wiki appeared in Tom’s fone. Definitely eager to know what was in store for them, Tom accessed Minnie’s entry on the ritual.
Keepock – Threck rite of passage consisting of single or multiple (never more than 4) youths aged 2-3yrs (prepubescent—human physequiv 6-10yrs), sent unsupervised to sacred arboreal circle 1.3K NNW of NW gate for 3 nights. Upon completion, youths are advanced from nursery to primary education. INC. Compound: -kee – as suffix, generally associated with Threck youth (ie sootskee, setkee, eskee); kee- – to-date unique usage as prefix sans Es (ie eskee-) is keepock. –pock – animal, self-mobilizing lifeform (erroneously inclusive of ‘thratze’ mykota glacius “glacier shroom”), poorly defined as thing which lives and moves of own power and intent.
Relieved, Tom closed the wiki. While looking forward to bidding farewell to Unhkte, arriving at the rally point, and sleeping … oh, please tell me Zisa and Pablo setup more than just their own tents … he found himself oddly thrilled by a revelation. How many wiki articles could he correct, expand, or create based upon this day alone? And then the buzz deflated, spluttering off like a balloon. For what purpose? There was no more legion of eager scientists awaiting their periodic influx of Epsilon C data. Or rather, the legion still existed, but the conduit to them had been irrevocably destroyed. Earth wouldn’t haven’t the faintest clue of a problem for another three years. In six months, and for another twenty-plus years, full supply pods would brush past scattered station debris and probably explode while entering the atmosphere, raining extraterrestrial materials onto the oceans and surface.
An M from Angela.
ANGELA: I’m sorry. And you know I don’t ever say that crap. Forgive me?
She must have noticed his malaise and assumed she was to blame.
TOM: Yes. Of course.
He felt her hand press into the small of his back.
“Now, we have reached the last walk,” Unhkte said, halting at the beginning of a flagstone-covered path bordered with decorative hedging and unlit stand torches. A light breeze from the coast pushed the city’s briny aroma to Tom’s nostrils. The lead guard knelt down and opened a small box, extracted some tools and bits of kindling, and set to work lighting a small hand torch. “The prepared Sootskee must find their way here unaided. This is essentially symbolic custom, and the source of much debate. Does one become any less Threck if guided to this point? Certainly not, lest Eshkowoss Peekt’s first Sootskee would be counted as such.” Unhkte looked at Tom. “You know much of Threck, but I wonder if you know history. Are Syons People learned of Eshkowoss Peekt?”
In the Threck emergence mythology, as Minnie had explained on a few occasions, Eshkowoss Peekt was the Threck Adam … or Moses, or all of them combined—the very first Threck. The catalogued story, which Tom pulled up on his fone, recounted the tale of a mindless Threck ancestor getting lost in the jungle near what was now Threck City. She fell asleep—as most of these characters seemed to in Earth-diver-type creation myths—and while sleeping, received the gift of awareness from some sort of Mother Earth/Gaea-type God who resided within the jungle. Upon awakening, Eshkowoss Peekt looked on the world with new eyes and comprehension, then ventured forth to share this awareness with all the other dumb animals.
Given recent events, Tom opted to lie to Unhkte. “We do not. Please enlighten us.”
Unhkte proceeded slowly up the path as the lead guard used the now-lit hand torch to ignite the first stand torch. “Yes, as we proceed. But I will be brief, as we will soon reach the fork, and must be silent for the duration.” Tom agreed and followed along beside Unhkte as, little by little, the path before them brightened beneath the intensifying glow of rekindled torches. “Eshkowoss Peekt was one of many coast-dwellers, no wiser nor slower witted than any other,” Unhkte began, the story sounding as though it would probably end up a wordier rephrasing of Minnie’s version. “Meandering beyond the riverside dwellings for no particular reason, Eshkowoss Peekt began on this certain course. The path particulars are another source of debate among my colleagues, as if the journey shares relevance with the destination, thus this nonsense with the unguided portion of the walk. Night fell, and without the sun as guide, Eshkowoss Peekt lay down near this particular stand of trees, quickly falling asleep.”
Unhkte stopped at the path’s fork as one of the guards continued down the right trail, lighting more torches.
“We will wait here for the guard as I summarize. During the night, Eshkowoss Peekt was endowed with kee, sleeping through the second night, and then the next. On the third morning, Eshkowoss Peekt awoke, and understood. With memories of arriving upon this place from two different directions, Eshkowoss Peekt looked at the deep tracks leading back toward the coast and suddenly knew—so simply, so obviously—how to return to the coast dwellings. But there was also the memory of arriving from the opposite direction, the undergrowth, and Eshkowoss Peekt spread low, following this strange memory deeper into the thicket, whereupon she discovered a magnificent city surrounded by red flora.”
Returning from the lit trail, the lead guard extinguished the hand torch in a water pot just off the path. “The Sootskee will have left the gate already, Dowfwoss.”
Unhkte agreed, motioned for silence, and followed the lead guard up the unlit left path. This trailbed consisted only of dry dirt and the sporadic exposed boulder. Though subtle, the path’s upward grade reminded Tom’s calves and quadriceps that they had yet to recover from the earlier tower climb.
A few minutes later, the path ended at a bend. Tom followed Unhkte down a few rough steps into a small open bunker area, like an observation booth, built into the side of the hill. Piled stones served as low walls on three sides, and four knee-height boulders in a line near the longer wall served as seats.
Unhkte straddled one of the middle boulders and draped herself over it. Tom sat on the boulder beside Unhkte, but found his entire upper body looming well above the wall. He glanced at Unhkte, whose seemingly reproachful eyes steered him to the ground in front of the seat.
Tom turned to advise Angela on proper seating, but she was way ahead of him, tucking her feet in under her knees, and looking like a kindergartner at circle time. She smiled up at him and patted the dirt beside her.
ANGELA: Let’s hope this is a quick show. I’m ready to eat, crawl into a tent with you, and sleep for a few days. I really hope someone comes to pick us up, though. I am not ready for a 20K hike.
TOM: Same here on all counts. Hopefully by now someone’s noticed we’re late coming home from work.
Settled in his seat between the boulder and low wall, Tom peered out at the view. The observation booth sat on a rise above a wide ravine set between two ridges. In the distance, the hills steepened and merged as they neared the peak of the rain-soaked Mount Tensakoss.
Tom caught Unhkte glance right, and followed her gaze. A small shadow crossed in front of one of the torches on the path, then another. Tom elbowed Angela.
They all watched as, one after another, the three Sootskee entered the ring, walked to the center, and picked up a thin branch from a pile. Each proceeded to the edge of the circle and began a rehearsed march around the perimeter, whacking their branches against every epsequoia trunk as they passed. Upon completing a circle, they lined up in a row on the left side of the circle and knelt low, spreading their arms and legs out until they lay as flat as possible—just as they’d done for months back at the nursery.
Tom heard the distinct sound of three different Threck eye sets hiding and popping up. Unhkte stiffened beside him and air began sucking faster through her siphons. One of the guards stepped into the space on the other side of Angela, pointing excitedly to the clearing. The other quickly emulated the first, and Unhkte threw up her arms for calm and silen
ce.
Unsure what was so thrilling, Tom scanned the clearing for something more than unmoving Threck young. Sure enough, to the left of the Sootskee, three little creatures made their way through the ground cover, each on a course for a specific youth. He closed his bio eye and zoomed in. Wectworms. A common parasite in Threck Country, and creatures the Threck were known to avoid—even exterminate. Tom pulled up the wiki he and Zisa had created about them. As he’d thought, no new entries from Zisa, Minnie, or anyone else mentioning their inclusion in this ritual. It didn’t make sense. Wectworms entered hosts through an available orifice, made their way to the brain (in Threck) or central nervous system (dalis, pikpiks, etc.), where they burrowed in for the long haul. The majority of hosts abandoned previous behaviors, compelled instead to find the nearest fresh-water source, drink until practically bursting, and then travel to the nearest wectworm colony. Upon arrival, and with little fanfare, the host lay down and presented their body for mass consumption. In the small percentage of recorded cases in which this last step did not occur, the outcome wasn’t much better: death within 16 hours. Body eaten by some other lucky worms.
ANGELA: Those are those worms! The zombie ones! WTH?
So the question was, did Unhkte see the parasites approaching? Were the worms the source of the guards’ excitement? Was being infected actually a part of the keepock rite of passage? Minnie definitely hadn’t mentioned anything of the sort. It had to be some kind of discipline test. The Threck must have developed an extraction procedure, carried out before the youths became truly infected.
Indeed, and to Angela’s horror (tightening death grip on Tom’s right hand), the worms disappeared beneath the three Sootskee, and none of the children moved. Their eyes remained hidden. Unhkte’s clubs came slowly together and turned upward.
LIVETRANS: [Contented approval]
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