by Garry Ocean
*****
Nick was squatting next to an anthill that grew that summer in the backyard, right next to the house wall. He had already wasted an hour looking at it. It was as hot as it could only get in July. His grandma had been urgently called for an emergency business trip to Fiji, to the Kolo-and-Suva nature reserve: There, a baby of a tyrannosaurus cloned shortly before had been refusing food for several days.
Mom was coming back from work closer to the evening. This is why Nick was his own boss and could do whatever he wanted.
Nick could hear muffled voices coming from the second floor, through his father’s office open windows. Egor Stroev, dad’s old friend, was on his unscheduled vacation on the Earth and, of course, could not miss the opportunity to visit. They knew each other from the time they were cadets. They had enrolled in the Space Military Academy together and together were assigned to GDES upon graduation.
When Nick heard familiar words Hanimed, base, and pseudo-lakes, he crouched a little closer out of his boyish curiosity. Uncle Egor, who had always been quite reserved and composed, was telling dad something in a very animated manner. He was pacing the room back and forth, from the window to the door, and therefore his voice was in turns approaching and moving away.
Nick froze, trying to decide if he should indicate to them that he was there. Of course he should have done that right away, but now it is probably better to stay in hiding to avoid embarrassment. Meanwhile, he heard the sound of an opening wine bottle cork, wine glasses clanking in a toast, and his farther saying something in consolation. After a short pause, Uncle Egor continued in his usual low, slightly hoarse voice, as if he was talking about something quite normal and routine, “When I felt the hair on my right arm raise, I looked that way without moving my head, and froze. There they were walking, strolling even. The trinity. They were arguing about something, waving and gesturing their arms, but I couldn’t hear a word. I could see them talking, opening their mouths, explaining something to each other. And I was just standing there, in a stupor, looking at them, like an idiot, unable to say anything or move. Two of them were wearing light unzipped jumpsuits, and the third one was in a civilian t-shirt, with some red stain on it, as if he had spilled cranberry juice on himself. And they are just strolling there, in no rush, right toward my lab technicians. And the latter continued to work on their equipment, noticing nothing around them. I don’t know how long I would have just stood there like that, but then I suddenly noticed that there was no steam coming out of the trinity’s mouths! But they should have had it – it was minus fifteen, no less. Then I started to yell something at my technicians, don’t remember exactly what, but something like, “Get back! Run back here!” and something else… The smarty pants stopped their work, and just stood there with their mouths open, looking at me as if I had lost my mind, and clearly not seeing the trinity approaching them, like, right in their faces. Suddenly, on the three, the one that was wearing the stained t-shirt, stops and looks right at me. I will never forget his look, to the end of my days. That look, you know, like with a reproach, just like a mother would look at a toddler who is throwing a tantrum. And shaking his head, like, you can’t really do this here. Where did I get all that agility and speed then? I think the Olympic runners would have been jealous of me. I reached my lab guys in three long jumps, got them both by their arms, and ran to the glider! Put into overdrive, good thing the anti-gravitation system worked really well. In any case, we flew up like candlelight. It took us about forty minutes, not less to get to the base and dock, and all that time we were just silent. I probably shouldn’t tell you what those guys thought about their security guy suddenly going crazy. They were just looking at me with their wide eyes while I was thinking all that time what I should put into my report to the Center. In any case, the outcome would have been the end of my career. And another sad prospect – to get into the clingy hands of the psycho-correctors for a long time as a subject of study. You know how much they love guys like us!”
“And what’s next? We were greeted by at least half of the base. The entire lower deck was filled with people, we couldn’t make way. As my guys told me later, barely five minutes after we landed on Hanimed, we disappeared from all radars and sensors. The glider was there, whole and intact, all systems were active, and we were just not there. The scanners could not see me, no matter the adjustments. All data were at the zero level, including the biometrics. They started to double check on everything, of course. The rescue boot was on ready, as it was prescribed. It was of course highly unlikely that all systems malfunctioned at the same time, but such cases had happened in the past as well. And then they saw this huge discharge. What was it? – Our smarty pants could not come to one shared conclusion. Some said it was an unpredictable tectonic shift, the one that happens once in a million years.”
“I later studied the tape myself. The volcano was spitting its stuff out, about 1.5 miles up into the air. It was of course beautiful, mesmerizing. And in the fuss it created, they finally lost us altogether. They thought we stayed there. But once we broke through the stratosphere, they first saw our biometric data, and then they were able to pin us. That’s what happened. In my report, I decided not to mention anything about the doctoral students. No one saw them except for me. The commission decided that my professional gut feeling had served me well and saved us all. I was given an award. And of course they sent me on a voluntary-mandatory vacation, as it happens in cases like this. I spent a whole month on Excelsior, swimming and sunbathing, and then decided to stop by the Earth and visit with you. Because, you know, I can’t share this with anyone else, but neither can I just keep this to myself, you understand what I mean, don’t you...”
Chapter 11
He heard a quiet whistle from above. Nick turned his head up and saw the Alvar’s dark figure on top of the mountain. He disappeared for a second, and the next thing he saw was a rope falling down and unfolding in free fall to its full length. Cleo exclaimed happily. Whisperer picked up the end from the ground and pulled the rope down hard several times.
“Don’t be afraid, it’ll hold!” Gunn-Terr waved at them from above. “Climb up one by one. Cleo, you go first!”
Everyone looked at the girl. Cleo, just out of an old habit, wanted to object again. But then she met Whisperer’s eyes and decided not to argue. Shoving aside Sith who wanted to help her, the girl started to climb up, quickly grabbing on the rope with her hands and hardly using her legs to push her own weight up.
Whisperer started to climb next. Nick was holding the rope down so that it does not sway from side to side. When he looked at it closer, the rope turned out to be tied from several firm but flexible and long stems of a plant unfamiliar to Nick, resembling the Earth’s lianas. He was puzzled trying to figure out where Gunn-Terr could have found them here, on bare rocks. There was no plant life here except for bright orange moss on the Bony Ridge. Whisperer had hard time climbing the rope up, panting. Finally, Gunn-Terr bent in his waist, grabbed the man under his arms and pulled him up the platform he was standing on in one dash.
Then they decided to pull up their back bags. While Sith was tying them up, Nick was carefully watching the surroundings.
Suddenly, cold sweat broke out on his back. Where’s the puppy? The last thing he remembered was that he left him behind down at the lonely mountain foothill.
“Gray! Gray!” Nick shouted on top of his lungs. His heart sank when he imagined the little animal, hiding behind some big rock hoping that the approaching fog would pass him.
“Nick!” Sith pulled him by his arm. “Have you lost your mind completely? Here he is, he was with us all this time!”
As a proof, Gray dashed to Nick in a flash, jumped on his chest and a second later was comfortably sitting on his shoulder.
“Where have you been, bad boy?” Nick hissed at him in Interling, not even noticing he switched to the language Sith and no one could understand. Recently, the little animal seemed to have developed a habit of disappearing at
will and then re-appearing suddenly out of nowhere. “Where the hell have you been?”
“When you and Whisperer left, he lost his mind, couldn’t stay still,” Sith said, tying up the last bag. “Wimping and howling, running around your back bag in circles.”
Sith waved at Gunn-Terr, signaling that he could pull up the bags, and added, “Then I was distracted a little. That’s when he disappeared. One moment he was there, and then – gone. I thought he went to catch up with you, and here he is!”
Sith bent his head to the side a little, looked at Nick with teasing suspicion, and asked, “Did you think of him only now?”
“Well…” Nick was embarrassed. The boy’s words got to him. He was even angrier with himself now. “Here in this world one can lose one’s head and not notice immediately.”
“Here in this world!” Sith mocked him, “All right, you steppe dweller, climb up before something awful really happens here. You must have alerted everyone here with your scream. The beasts, of course, may not be too smart but they definitely have their hearing.
Forgetting that he had intended to climb up the last, Nick started to quickly move up the rope, desperately wanting to finish this conversation that was so unpleasant for him.
*****
It was much harder than they thought to move along the Bony Ridge. Even despite the fact that the Dominia was generously lighting their path. One could only imagine what kind of cataclysms took place on this planet millions of years before, when in the middle of a huge valley suddenly appeared this bizarre mountain chain out of nowhere. As if some extremely powerful force pushed it out from the planet’s core to the surface. Further, rains and winds did their work and gave the Bony Ridge its current fearsome look that completely justified its name.
When they moved along the rocks, they had to watch carefully where to step. The Bony Ridge was a strange mixture of the firm granite and fragile lime rocks. The surface that at first seemed steady and firm suddenly turned out to be shale crumbling into small pieces with sharp angles. If you were not careful and lost focus you could easily fall into a deceiving cavern and seriously damage a limb.
Gunn-Terr was moving ahead of everyone else, using his gut feeling and experience to find the safest passages among the chaotically piled rocks and sharp granite slabs. The hunters tried to cautiously slide between huge mushroom-like boulders. It seemed that their thin stems would break at any time from even the slightest touch and the people would be buried under the many-ton debris of rocks.
Nick had some experience in mountain climbing. He remembered very well the instructions Dato Gzirishvili gave to them at the basic training camp in the Northern Tien Shan. And Dato knew his stuff as he was a professional instructor of mountaineering, “Remember, recruits, once and for all: The Mountain will never forgive any mistakes! Moving on the mountain rocks is extremely difficult and tiring, you move slowly. Before you even start to try and conquer a rock you need to carefully observe the area of the rock you need to go around and charter the general direction of your movement, taking the safest and most effective route. When you approach the rock area or the rock wall you need, first of all, to inspect the foothill for how long the fallen rocks have been on the ground to estimate a possible rock fall. Then you need to carefully inspect the nearest areas of the route, peg the farthest anchor points and mark smaller parts of the route, as well as to determine the azimuth of movement. In the areas where there’s a potential for a rock fall or rock collapse, you need to be extra careful: You cannot hang out there, you need to cover those areas as quickly as possible, from one shelter to another, striving to stay on the safest and shortest route – the rocky ridge.”
Gunn-Terr was looking more and more often and anxiously at the rock walls hanging over the trail on the left. He would stop, carefully inspecting the foothill of the sheer rock that was almost as vertical as a cliff. Finally the warrior stopped, waited for everyone to catch up with him, and said, “This is where we’ll break for camp. We need to find a shelter. We won’t be able to pass further at night.”
No one objected. The dangers and challenges of the last days exhausted everyone. Croaking, Whisperer sat down on the rocky ground. Sith plopped onto his back bag right where he stood. Cleo climbed a large boulder that looked like an oversized pebble and stretched her entire body with visible pleasure.
“You should also sit down and relax!” Gunn-Terr said to Nick. “I’ll be back soon.”
Not waiting for any objections, the warrior quickly climbed up a big boulder. From it, he adroitly jumped onto the mountain ledge that was hanging out like a cornice. Soon, he disappeared between the fantastic granite arches, from below reminding Nick of a skeleton of a prehistoric animal.
Nick didn’t want to object at all. He also felt exhausted and completely drained inside and out. His hip started to ache again, even though the wound he had received at the lighthouse mostly had healed already and did not bother him normally. “Perhaps, it is a phantom pain,” Nick thought, “The Alvar is right. I need to take some rest and try to relax at least a little. This planet has exhausted me. It’s exhausting. And it’s just the beginning.”
“Here, Nick, sip some of this!” Whisperer was handing him his wineskin.
Nick took one sip and nearly spat it out. His whole mouth was filled with unbearable bitterness.
“You need to swallow it! Swallow!” the old man encouraged him. “It will make you feel better.”
Whisperer did not lie. Already in one minute Nick’s head cleared up and the blood started to circulate better in his veins. It felt as if he was heated from inside. Nick wiped off the sweat on his forehead.
“Did it get through you, Nick, ah?” Sith looked at him with a smile. “Got you, right?”
“Yes, it got me indeed,” Nick cleared his throat. “Thank you, Whisperer! Could you please give me some water to chase it?”
“Sure, sure,” the old man said, pleased. “After Cleo drinks enough.
Nick looked at the girl and hardly was able to contain his smile. She was sitting there, all red, and tears were streaming down on her beautiful face, grimaced in pain. Whisperer must have given her his miraculous concoction.
“Eww, so disgusting!” Cleo wheezed and took a couple of more big gulps of water. “Did you decide to kill me, Whisperer?”
“Why kill, this is just an infusion from the warthog root,” Sith decided to stand up for Whisperer. “From the Black Swamp itself! It’s the one that Ron had brought back that time, right, Whisperer?”
“Right, Sith,” the old man stroked his beard. “It will give you strength, but not for a long time. We all need to get some sleep. Otherwise we will be as sleepy and tired tomorrow as pregnant yellowbellies.”
Suddenly, small rocks fell from above. Everyone turned their heads up and saw Gunn-Terr. “I have found a cave. Not too far from here,” the Alvar showed the direction was behind his back. “We’ll spend the night there, and set out in the morning again. We’ll take the top route.”
*****
The fire was crackling quietly. The flames were throwing fancy shadows and lights on the walls and high ceilings of their temporary shelter. Nick was lying down on the ground, with his eyes half-closed, finally enjoying the calm and peace. Next to him, Gray was sleeping, curled up and quietly sniffling. Whisperer fell asleep right away, without waiting for the fire to be started. He was so tired he just curled up on the ground and fell asleep. Sith made himself comfortable next to Cleo. They were just sitting there, talking about something quietly.
Nick saw Gunn-Terr’s figure in the low entrance to the cave. He squeezed himself into the narrow entrance, holding a large batch of brushwood. “It’s so amazing,” Nick thought. “Everyone is dead beat and tired, but he seems to be all right.” On the contrary, Gunn-Terr seemed to have been transformed in the mountains, if you could say so about this composed and always reserved warrior. His eyes were sparkling now, and he had a little hardly noticeable smile on his face. His rough facial features w
ere radiating warmth and kindness.
Gunn-Terr came up to the fire and carefully, as if he was feeding a wild animal, started to add brushwood to it. The fire flames, crackling merrily, went high up.
“See, Cleo, here in these mountains I found even the smokeless! Of course, it’s not like the one we have in the White Rocks, it’s more like half-dead, but nonetheless you can’t find a better food for the fire in the mountains,” Gunn-Terr said excitedly.
Indeed, the smokeless, that Nick at first took for brushwood, but now after looking at it more carefully noticed that it looked more like a type of expansive moss than tree brunches, was burning practically without smoke.
Gunn-Terr squatted near the fire and pulled the rope and several longer lianas closer. He brought them into the cave earlier. They were of a pale-brown color, about two fingers thick. Along the entire stem, they had short root-like growths.
“Do you remember I told you about the mountain ivy?” he asked Cleo. “This is it, right here.”
The Alvar took out his knife and started to work on the stem, cleaning off the growths. “It grows only on cliffs. Its main quality is that it’s flexible and reliable!”
Gunn-Terr pulled hard on the stem, as if proving his own words. It did not break. He stroked his hand several times along the cleaned area of the stem and, giving it a satisfied smile, continued, “Some of them can grow to a hundred steps in length. But we, of course, don’t need them that long. Here, catch it!” quite unexpectedly, Gunn-Terr threw the cleaned end of the plant to Sith. The boy, who was listening to the Alvar with great interest all this time, caught it mid-air.
“Hold tight and pull. Yes, like that. Good,” Gunn-Terr started to clean off the unnecessary roots in highly skillful motions, as if he had been doing that all his life.