“The frama-shaped Ankosh is Ankosh. That Ankosh controls that Ankosh. That Ankosh knows that this Ankosh and Diggory wait for information about kralsnar. That Ankosh will probably return with information.”
“Wait—probably? You mean you don’t know?”
“Only if there is joining will this Ankosh know decisions that Ankosh makes,” he said.
“So, if I understand,” I said slowly, “that piece of you that flew away is not under your control. It has its own thoughts, ideas, and memories while it is gone. Each separate piece has its own life. Then sometimes the different pieces come together and ‘join’. Then you are no longer separate?”
“When there is joining,” he said, “the joining is complete. When Ankosh joins Ankosh there is not one Ankosh or other Ankosh. Ankosh is not other. Ankosh is Ankosh.”
“So the piece that left you is hren just as you are hren?”
“Ankosh is hren,” he replied. “Small Ankosh is hren. Ankosh shaped as frama is hren. Ankosh shaped as Diggory is hren. Ankosh with no shape is hren.”
It sounded like Ankosh was some sort of colony creature, perhaps? It could separate into smaller organisms that retained their own life and memories, then re-absorb them later and merge consciousness, including memories? I tried to explain this idea to Ankosh as well as I could. After many repetitions and re-phrasings on my part, and pauses and reflection on his part it seemed that maybe—just maybe—I was on to something.
“There is some understanding in Diggory,” was how Ankosh put it.
Now that was fascinating: a life form totally unlike anything I’d met before! Now his “Ankosh is not other” statements made sense. Ankosh was a species uncharacterized by individuals—”others”. All Ankosh was one being, or at least potentially so. I couldn’t even really conceive of such an existence—and I didn’t really have time to try. The frama-Ankosh landed nearby and spoke up in a piping, shrill voice.
“Kralsnar are further away than before, but they still come this way.” Rather than merge with its larger self, the frama-Ankosh sat atop Debbie (who didn’t seem to notice) as we continued on our way. About an hour later it took flight again and returned ten or fifteen minutes later.
“Kralsnar have split into two groups. The larger group goes east. The smaller group follows Diggory and Ankosh.”
“How many are in the smaller group?” I asked.
“Six,” was the answer. “They are moving quickly. If they hunt this group, they will catch it.”
We increased our speed as much as possible, but I was the slowest member. Debbie’s long legs let her move casually quite a bit faster than I could (though she was normally content to walk along as slowly as her master). The larger Ankosh could form legs as long as hers, and the smaller could, of course, fly. The flying Ankosh scouted ahead and behind. It reported the progress of the kralsnar group.
Clearly they were pursuing us—by smell, I guessed, as Ankosh described them as moving on all fours with their snouts close to the ground. Soon after that we came to a shallow stream and waded downstream to throw them off our scent, but like the best of Earthly bloodhounds, they kept on our trail.
Soon we were going to have a fight on our hands. I did not know how Ankosh would fare in battle or how well he could mimic some dangerous creature. I had taken one down before with my zarke, but six? Debbie, of course, would run.
I considered an ambush. But where, and how? I was no tactician. I’d racked up an decent kill list, but it was all dumb luck. My sole strategy consisted of “Hey, I can climb trees slightly better than a telak!” Was I willing to bet my life on kralsnar being bad at climbing?
“Ankosh!” I called out. “How good are you at fighting? Can you hurt them?”
“Ankosh can hurt kralsnar. How much is unknown.”
“We have to find someplace to hide,” I said. “We can’t fight six of them on our own!”
“Hiding from kralsnar will be difficult,” he said. “Kralsnar are great hunters-by-smell.”
“Then you have to leave, Ankosh!” I returned. “Split yourself up into small pieces, turn into a bunch of frama and fly away! They can’t hurt you then.”
“There is no fear of kralsnar in Ankosh. Ankosh will stay and help Diggory.”
“Let’s keep moving. Maybe we’ll find a better place to fight before they catch up with us.” Immediately the Ankosh-frama took to a wide circling flight overhead. Ankosh-human and I trekked as directly away from the last sighting of the enemy as possible. After a minute the frama form lit on a nearby branch and babbled something at us before taking back off.
“There is a cave nearby,” said Ankosh. “The kralsnar will not be able to surround Ankosh and Diggory.” We followed the departing pseudo-frama. Soon we came to the destination. ‘Cave’ was a bit of an overstatement. It was merely a hollow spot in a short cliff that bordered the banks of a creek. It would prevent being surrounded, but otherwise offered no real protection. The entire kralsnar party would still be able to get to us.
“There is no better cover nearby,” said Diggory-Ankosh.
“Let’s make this one better,” I said, and directed him to help me stack up some nearby fallen tree trunks to form makeshift walls that further funneled the opening of the hollow. They would do nothing to stop, and little to slow, the kralsnar, but they would provide cover from projectiles and force the enemy to either push them aside or go around us to engage in melee. I stood with my back to the cliff wall and my zarke ready.
A crashing of brush alerted us to the arrival of our pursuers barely a moment before the first two arrived, leaping from the cliff overhead. They landed on all fours, spinning about and crouching, ready to leap. One pointed a clawed finger/toe/whatever at as, hissing out, “Si sufa ka kas.”
“Do you understand them?” I whispered to Ankosh.
“No,” came his faint reply.
“We don’t want a fight,” I called out to the kralsnar.
“Si sankasa isa.” With that the crimson-skinned warrior pulled his curved blade from its scabbard on his shoulder. The remaining kralsnar had, by now, gathered behind the first two. In the group I counted two swords, three spears, and one that appeared unarmed. The foremost sword-wielder stepped forward, looking cautious but relaxed. I pointed the zarke at him and fired.
A burst of pellets ripped through the warrior’s chest, spraying blood from the now-collapsing warrior. Before his fellows could react Ankosh sprang into action. He had abandoned his humanoid appearance and now was a roundish blob with pseudopods sprouting off at various angles. One such pseudopod flung a head-sized stone in a whipping action at the second warrior. It was a glancing blow, but the blob rolled forward, another appendage flinging another rock. A third followed in rapid succession.
Another shot from my gun struck the shoulder of a spear-bearing kralsnar, throwing off his thrust at me. I backpedaled and fired again, missing entirely. He swung about, stabbing with the spear, but I was just a little too far away. I nearly tripped on a branch before my next shot found its home in the spear-warrior’s chest.
Amazingly, four kralsnar were already down. Ankosh was engaged with the fifth, swinging pseudopods armed with stones and branches. A sixth kralsnar raised up its massive sword and cut down into Ankosh’s body. I cried out a warning, too late. The sword cleaved the blob nearly in two, two lobes falling to the side, before reforming around the blade itself. In a moment reminiscent of his pulling away the stick I’d poked him with in our first encounter, Ankosh seized the blade in his gelatinous flesh, then flowed up the arm holding it, pouring himself around the form of the kralsnar.
I took aim at the warrior that had been the subject of Ankosh’s attacks moment before and squeezed the firing lever. The zarke whirred briefly, but the absence of the normal fwip sound signaled that the thing was empty. Blast! I dropped the weapon and pulled out my spear. The warrior had rolled to his feet. It snarled briefly at me but rather than lunging, spun about, nearly slapping me with its tail, and darted off
in the direction from which it had come.
I turned to aid Ankosh, but dared not. His form had spread out over the face and torso of the remaining kralsnar, and any strike against the one might hit the other. The scarlet warrior was thrashing about, clawing madly at the mass surrounding its head. Its chest was heaving mightily, its back arching, trying to breathe—Ankosh was smothering it. Its claws gouged out small splatters of olive drab goo, but the remaining portion just reformed over the mouth and nose. The kralsnar fell to its knees, weakening rapidly. Soon it was lying prone, its back arched painfully, until its spasms grew fainter and less frequent. After a time, Ankosh flowed off the now—slain body and reformed in his humanoid shape. He looked a little smaller.
“Are—are you okay, Ankosh?” I asked as he just stood there vacantly for several moments.
“The kralsnar ate part of Ankosh,” he said. “But what is left is okay.” He walked about the clearing for little while, finding small chunks of himself and reabsorbing them.
“One of them escaped,” I said. “He may go and warn his fellows. We should leave.” Ankosh agreed, but first wanted to scout the area. He formed his now-familiar Ankosh-frama, but this time it flapped clumsily and fell to the ground. It tried to lift off again with similar lack of success. He explained as he re-absorbed.
“There is not enough remembering to fly,” he said.
“What do you mean?”
“When Ankosh is damaged, sometimes remembering is lost. There is much knowing in order to fly. Flying is difficult and complicated. Now, some part of the remembering is not available. There is no knowing of what exactly is going wrong. Learning to fly again will take work. Maybe much work.”
I was not pleased to learn that we had just lost our best scout, but a few hours ago I hadn’t even known we had one.
After retrieving Debbie from her predictable retreat, I examined the bodies and took their swords and knives. Then we beat a hasty departure to the south. We did not stop to rest until nightfall.
“Why did Diggory want Ankosh to escape instead of fighting with Diggory?” he asked me that evening as I made camp.
“I didn’t see any use in you getting hurt,” I said, then smiled. “I didn’t know how hard you are to hurt, or how good you were in a fight.”
“Diggory did not want Ankosh to be hurt,” he replied. “Ankosh stayed because Ankosh did not want Diggory to be hurt.”
“Yeah, we call that ‘being friends’,” I said. “Doesn’t Ankosh have friends?”
“Ankosh is not other. To have friends there must be other.”
We were silent for awhile.
“There is no knowing in Ankosh where Ankosh and Diggory are going,” he said. “There is no strong desire to go one place or another in Ankosh. Is there knowing in Diggory?”
“Not really,” I answered. “I plan on exploring and finding more hren. I hope that someday I find someone who has met my pakren. That is, even if they are on this world.” I paused a bit. “My father told me that on my world one can usually find cities if you follow the water downstream, because people often make cities on rivers. So I guess I’ll find the river again and follow it.”
“Here there are many gatherings at rivers,” confirmed Ankosh after thinking a while. “That seems like a good way to find hren.”
“What is ‘father’?” Ankosh asked after another long pause. I tried my best to explain to fathers and mothers and children to him. He was uncomfortably curious about some of the details.
“Is this how most hren are?” he asked.
“As far as I know,” I said. “And most animals, too.”
“Ankosh makes more Ankosh,” he said. “The way of Ankosh is much simpler.”
“Yeah, maybe,” I said, “but less fun.”
We continued our journey the next day, finding the river by mid-morning and following it downstream. The landscape was growing more wooded and the hills smaller but more numerous. Trees, both anemone and woody, were growing more common. The anemone trees in this region bore the same teal coloration as the ones near Augie Field, causing them to stand out in stark contrast to the dominant orange of most of the other vegetation. Clumps of small purple flowers that smelled faintly of spice and berries dotted the landscape, providing both visual and olfactory interest.
In an attempt to retrain his flight memories, Ankosh would daily form a pseudo-frama and try to take flight, and he would watch real frama with great interest. In the absence of our aerial scout, he would instead send out Ankosh-versions of small running creatures, but he was very cautious in doing so, since they would leave a trail of scent the kralsnar could follow. Despite his explanation that each portion of Ankosh was its own being, I could not help but think of them as pets.
“Don’t you worry that part of you won’t come back,” I asked him once.
“It is a concern,” he said, “that some part of Ankosh might be damaged or lost. But Ankosh is not easy to destroy, and it does not happen often.”
“Are you ever worried that part of you won’t want to come back?” I said. He pondered my question for a while.
“That does not make sense,” he said plainly. “Humans cannot separate. The hand of Diggory is only a hand. It cannot be a foot or a head. True?” I confirmed. “If Ankosh separates, the two portions can be anything that is needed.”
“Right,” I said. “Doesn’t that mean a ‘portion’ could go off on its own and start its own life? If my hand is separated, it dies. If a portion of Ankosh separates, it doesn’t die.” Ankosh thought a while.
“If the hand of Diggory could separate without death, and move and live on its own, would that be useful to Diggory?”
“Sure, maybe,” I said.
“If Diggory could do that, would Diggory not wish to join again with the hand?”
“Yes, of course.”
“So it is with Ankosh,” he said. “It is the way of Ankosh to separate when separation is useful, and to join again when possible. Ankosh desires to be joined with Ankosh.”
Chapter 14: The Search
A few days later the tops of wooden frames came in view east of the river. It turned out to be the remains of a small village, maybe eight or ten houses in all. All of them had been smashed apart or burned. The fresh air held no stench of smoke—it had not been recent.
There were skeletal remains of a few tailed bipeds, probably grend. There had been a massacre. There were footprints in patches of dried mud, many did not looked like a fit for the skeletons. Ankosh shifted one foot into a long-toed claw. It fit nicely into one of the other depressions.
“Kralsnar,” he said.
We searched about for a while. Most everything was burned or smashed: homes, furniture, pottery. I took comfort in finding that there were only a few skeletons—not enough to account for all the houses—suggesting that perhaps the rest escaped slaughter.
I retrieved my shovel from Debbie’s pack and began digging a grave. It did not need to be very large as there were few remains. I did not dig particularly deep, not wanting to take too long and run the risk of kralsnar catching up to us. Still, these were hren, and I felt they deserved some small measure of respect. I explained my actions to Ankosh when he asked, and soon he’d shifted his hands into wide, spade-like claws and helped. We laid the bones in the grave and covered them back up with the sandy soil. We made ready to leave.
Ankosh hesitated at one point, stopping mid-step. “Please wait,” he said. He walked a little further, then circled a small area, seeming pensive. He then melted into a shapeless lump and sloshed around a small hollow spot in the ground. He reshaped as humanoid.
“Ankosh was here,” he said.
“You were here earlier?” I said. “Before today?”
“Not the portion of Ankosh that travels with Diggory. Another portion.”
“How can you tell?”
“Taste Ankosh on ground,” he said. Taste? Sounded gross, but then all of Ankosh’s surface was capable of scent and taste (indeed, of all his
senses). He tasted everything he walked on.
“How long ago? Can you tell?”
“It is uncertain. More than a few days. Less than a gantan.”
“Can you tell which way it went afterwards?” In answer he poured himself across the ground and sloshed about on the area some more.
“It is likely, but not certain.”
“Do you want to follow the scent—um, taste?” I asked.
“Yes,” he said.
“Can I come with you?” I said. “I’d like to see this, if it’s okay with you.”
“Of course, Diggory may come.”
So we diverted from the nearly hopeless search for my pakren in favor of the likelier search for Ankosh’s. At this point he spent most of his time in an amorphous state, covering large portions of the ground, only a half-foot thick. He had to search a wide swath to follow the trail. Progress was slow and I had ample time to rest. I would often stop altogether and sit to mend an item of clothing or repair a strap on a harness before the dull green of my companion was far enough away that I felt the need to hasten to join him.
When we stopped to rest that night, I asked him, “Ankosh, if you can track your own kind like this, can you track other species as easily?”
“No,” he answered. “For Ankosh, the taste and smell of Ankosh is strong—easy to follow. Others are not easy.”
“Is this how you find other Ankosh on your homeworld? I know, I know—’Ankosh is not other’. Is this how Ankosh finds Ankosh?” He paused a long time.
“There is little remembering of the world of Ankosh.” Ankosh’s amnesia was a curious thing. When he was damaged in the fight with the kralsnar, and part of him was eaten, he’d forgotten how to fly. Had his arrival on Wayworld was traumatic enough to seriously damage his memory?
We continued our search the following morning. The path of the other Ankosh took us southwest into more heavily wooded areas. Our altitude was dropping, but the land was still quite hilly. We came to a tiny creek that the mystery Ankosh had crossed. It took my Ankosh some time to reestablish the trail on the other side. This phenomena was repeated a few times as the woods were crisscrossed with little streams.
Diggory's World (Wayworld Book 1) Page 24