by Paul Melko
I knew that I was the group’s voice of reason, always controlled, always considering. But I was more than that. I could be a catalyst just like Quant. I could be a mother just like Meda. I was not just about right and wrong. It was good to be with Strom and not have to be on guard.
He carried me into the tent, and I slipped inside a sleeping bag, shivering. The warmth of the pod, the naked bodies were overwhelmingly sensual.
Coming?
No.
I dug in deeper, unzipping my pants and shedding my shirt.
You’re cold. Sleepy half-thoughts, mixed with dreams.
I’m cold, warm me.
Where’s Strom?
On his spirit quest.
The smell of a joke appreciated.
Hold me.
The need for warmth turned to something else, and the heat of friction warmed me through and through.
In the dawn, Strom still sat before the burned-out fire, but now dew coated his shoulders and face. He was awake, staring into the fire ring. We filed out and stood around him.
He looked up at us, his dewed face seemingly too full with tears.
“I know where they are.”
Strom led us up over the lower foothills into the canyons and ridges of the higher mountains. Everywhere we turned, we were reminded of our painful stay on the mountain, and Strom’s trip down. Yet, he led us onward, through alpine slopes, still snow covered, through unravaged forests, older than pods, older than the Community.
In the mountains we only averaged eleven kilometers per day. In Quant’s head were tallies of every step of every day, every meter we traveled. She laid it all over the bears’ map I had discovered within Strom.
We passed the highest peaks just seven days after leaving the bears’ cave. Standing at the pass’s crest, we saw ranges of stone, ice, and forest stretching before us. It was cold in the pass, so we lingered only long enough to find our path down. By nightfall, we were back in more temperate weather. Winter to summer in a day.
I was the one who spotted it on the way down. At first my eyes passed right over it, but then I stopped walking and stared: a paw print. Not long before, a bear had crossed this path.
Strom knelt, touched the dirt around the print. It was damp, it having rained the day before. But the print had been shielded by a holly bush next to it. There were no other prints nearby.
A week old, two weeks? Strom guessed.
All the other tracks had been obliterated. Yet it was clear what path the bear had been following: it led perpendicular to our direction, down to a placid lake, just a few hundred meters away.
It could be a loner, Manuel sent, trying to cool Strom’s anxiousness. It may not be our pod at all.
I know, Strom sent.
We cut down the path toward the lake, slowed by the overgrown brush. Manuel pointed out a dob of fur stuck on a thorn. Meda found another soft print under a tree.
The path opened onto the lake edge; the water was rip-pleless. We saw no more tracks, no more indications of the bear at all. We realized then that we were stymied. The bear could have gone in any direction around the lake, and then taken off again at any point. We had not enough woodcraft to determine which direction it had gone.
Disappointment hung among us, and yet I was buoyed by what we had found. We touched palms, forming consensus.
We’re close. Very close, I sent.
We’ll find them, I know we will.
We’re within a hundred kilometers of them for certain.
All rational thoughts, and yet there was a hint of despair among us as we pitched the tent and caught fresh fish for dinner. No one had thought it directly, but my own unshared questions hovered in my mind: how long could we stay in the mountains by ourselves? When would we have to return to civilization and face the Overgovernment?
I didn’t want to dampen our hope, but these were questions we had to face sooner or later.
The next day, Strom was leading us along a forested ridge, an animal trail, when he yelped in discovery. As we ran forward, I saw the image he saw: a bear’s night den, a hollowed-out depression in the dirt a meter deep and three meters across. I stepped down into the hole, marveling at the creatures that had filled it. Strom’s memories of the beasts revealed their sizes, but they were in relation to Strom who is larger than the rest of us. In the den, my relative size to the beasts was apparent.
Smell that? Strom asked.
We can’t share smells, oddly, but we shared his recognition of the distinct bear smell. It was not like any animal I knew.
We’re close, Strom sent.
The ridge opened above a mountain lake, smoothly placid. No humans save us had seen this in decades. On the far shore, two moose pulled at grass.
Strom led us down to the shore.
Manuel sent, Bear mud wallow here.
The tracks were recent, bear tracks as long as Strom’s foot and as wide as mine. They led around the lake; perhaps the bears were stalking moose.
We followed, gathering blackberries as we walked. The land was more giving here than even the Amazon had been. The berries were just short of ripeness, tangy and bitter. I threw a half-mashed one at Manuel and turned to grab another one before he fired back.
I heard a chuff in the berries and froze. Automatically I released fear pheromone, and as I did a beast rose up in front of me.
It was three meters high, a blond-colored grizzly bear that stared at me with light brown eyes. The chuff turned into a growl. Saliva dripped from its mouth, which was covered in blackberry juices.
Friend?
There was no pheromone smell to this bear, no chemical memories, just the musky, musty odor of the bear den we had found that morning. This wasn’t a gene-modded bear; this one was wild.
Don’t move. Don’t turn and flee.
I had considered running. But the math was obvious even without Quant. My frail human body took me twenty kilometers an hour; the bear could run at sixty kilometers an hour for short bursts.
Fear fled from my mind, replaced by a practical view. I could see the bear from all directions. Its dished-in face was wider than my torso. Short ears adorned its head. It swung its head back and forth and chomped its jaw.
“Scat,” Strom yelled. He had found a stick on the rocky shore and was waving it.
Back away slowly, Meda advised.
I took one step back, then another. The bear remained standing in front of me. On my third step, the bear charged.
I dodged to the right, diving over gravelly rocks. The bear skidded past me and turned itself.
Sand! Strom’s thought.
A rock, thrown by Quant, thunked its skull, but it didn’t even notice. It launched itself toward me. I threw a handful of sand at its face and rolled again.
It sneezed, but a paw grazed my chest, knocking the wind out of me. It was a beast made of steel.
Strom’s branch was in its face then.
“Find a tree and climb it!” he yelled.
His branch split halfway up its length and was covered in dried leaves that rattled in the bear’s face. The rest of us dashed into the woods while Strom distracted it.
I found a tree and bolted up it second only to Manuel. We turned and pulled Quant and Meda into the top branches. From there I had a clear view of Strom dancing in front of the bear.
It reared up again, standing a meter taller than he.
He yelled and dodged in front of it.
“Hey ya! Hey ya!”
Pigeon-toed, it tottered after Strom. A claw snagged Strom’s branch, tearing it from his grasp.
He turned then and ran, splashing into the lake.
Bears can swim! I sent.
Yes, but not as fast as they can run, Quant replied.
Strom stretched out and dove into the water, just a few meters ahead of the bear. The bear was running now after him, crashing into the water. But Strom was already slashing the water with his crawl stroke. Even weighed down with his wet clothes, he outdistanced the bear.
When the bear realized it would never catch him, it howled, then turned back to land. Strom stayed where he was, treading water.
The bear came back toward our shore, waddled onto the rocks, and shook itself. It sniffed the air, then looked right at us.
It can knock trees this size over, Quant sent.
But it ambled past us and disappeared into the forest.
Strom swam back to shore and pulled himself onto a boulder. We dropped down to the ground and joined him, keeping one eye on the forest line. He’d shed his backpack near the water’s edge, but his shoes were lost. We wrung his thick socks out and left them to dry on the rocks.
That wasn’t our bear, I sent.
I think you’re right.
I was bruised but otherwise unhurt. We fashioned moccasins for Strom from our excess clothing, and then started hiking as soon as we were able. We wanted as much distance between us and that bear as we could put.
We had bought a slingshot and Quant used it to bring down fowl. When we could, we caught fish, either with spear or hook. In many ways it was an idyllic time for us, without any of the rigorous study and competition that had marked our education until then. Even Strom, who pursued his bears with a relentlessness that seeped into our dreams, relaxed in the weeks we tracked across the mountains.
It was easy to forget that the OG had tried to maim us in the Amazon, that we had run from Columbus Station, that we had nearly been sundered by drugs, and that we had avoided a mauling by centimeters.
The Ring, just ten thousand kilometers above us, a mere strip of silver, day and night, still fettered us. There was nowhere we could go on Earth or near space where it did not hover near us. And the Ring reminded us of Malcolm Leto.
To supplement our diet, we ate berries, so many berries that we pooped seeds every night. Wild blackberries lined all the trails we followed. Raspberries we also found, but not as often. The wild strawberries were too small and bitter for me to eat, but Manuel loved them.
We also ate acorns, ground into a pulp in one of our bowls and baked on a hot rock next to the fire. The roots of cattails were starchy and tasteless once boiled. With dandelion greens and morel mushrooms the roots made an almost decent soup. These were all skills we had learned in survival training. The summer was abundant, but there was no doubt that we would have to leave by fall, whether we found the bears or not. We could not survive a winter.
I know, Strom sent.
We can’t search-hide forever, I sent. We must go to Mother Redd.
Not yet.
Later.
I could have forced a more formal consensus with veto pheromone, but I let it pass.
We saw more signs of bears, day dens and scratching trees. We also found fresh and dried scat. From afar, we watched two cubs and their mother frolic in a mud hollow. They were not our bears either.
In a valley plain, thick with tall green grass, we watched a herd of elk graze. A few minutes later, a bruin erupted from the treeline and took down a nearby elk bull. Manuel spotted it first.
Look!
The elk met the bear’s charge with its new antlers, tossing the bear back. Undeterred, the bear swiped at the elk, catching its antlers and bending its neck. It flopped over on its side, and the bear was upon it, gouging flesh with its claws, and biting down on the back of its skull with its huge jaws.
Not a grizzly, Strom sent.
It was a brown bear, its fur a solid brown without the distinctive silver mane, though he looked liked a grizzly in other respects. We watched as he crushed the elk’s skull, and then sat down to feed on its haunch. The rest of the herd, which had darted at the initial pounce, continued grazing not too far away, apparently unconcerned now that the bear had its kill.
After it had finished a large section of the haunch, the bear stood and dragged the carcass toward the woods. Near the treeline, it bent over and used its powerful claws to dig a hole. We learned then what the hump of muscle on its shoulders was for. With a half-dozen sweeps of its arms, it had dug open a hole that all of us could have stood in up to our knees. In this it dumped the carcass and covered it with leaves and tree limbs. Dinner for tomorrow. We watched, then planned a route around the far side of the valley; we didn’t want to come between the bear and his larder.
By the time we were six weeks into our trip, we were beginning to see the futility of our hunt. I needed a decent shower, and I knew we were ranker than we could smell since our noses had grown accustomed. We had almost decided to hike back to Denver and find some sort of job for the winter, maybe trying again in the spring.
But that same day we were discussing the chill in the air and the first colored leaves on the trees, Strom’s bears appeared out of nowhere and sat down at our campsite.
Strom, the biggest bear sent, a male. We did not smell the thought ourselves, but heard the call through Strom. It wasn’t until later that all of us could speak directly to the bears.
“Hello!” Strom cried, and hugged the bear in his arms. Even as big as he was, his arms did not reach around the bear’s neck.
This is Papa, Roam, and Sleepy, he announced.
The two females chuffed at us, and the smell of chemical thought was heavy in the air. Through Strom we understood their greetings. Sleepy sprawled down on the dirt next to us and closed her eyes.
I have seldom seen Strom more happy, and so we all were, bears and humans alike.
We followed the bears, foraging, though we were less followers than ad hoc bears. They seemed to view us as such. We followed a well-worn bear trail, feeding as we went: the same berries we had been eating all summer. The bears also chewed on pine trees, tearing away at the bark with their paws to get at the cambium layer; Roam was especially fond of the white pine and would ask the pod to take kilometer-long hikes off the trails to find one she knew of.
Whereas in a human pod, consensus governed our larger actions, Papa seemed to be the decider. Though on at least one occasion, Roam and Sleepy vetoed Papa. This was when they caught wind of other humans. Papa wanted to look for them, possibly meet them, but the two females did not. There was a spike of fear in their minds, but also resolution. Papa mentally shrugged and agreed.
It wasn’t just berries and bark that the bears ate, however. We watched with fascination as Roam and Sleepy herded a huge antelope toward a hollow where Papa lurked. With a slap of his paw, he broke the animal’s neck. It had taken them two minutes of effort to feed themselves for the next two days.
While they feasted on bloody antelope flesh, we caught and roasted a couple of fish over a fire. Roam watched with interest as I started the fire.
I wish I had a thumb, she sent.
I laughed, then said, Just one?
She looked from her left to right front paw. One would be enough.
Sleepy dragged a haunch of antelope over to the fire.
Cook it?
The pod shared a glance, then I shrugged. Strom went to find a strong enough spit, while Meda and Manuel built up the fire. We roasted the antelope for them, and they ate it with the same abandon that they ate the raw stuff. They did say it tasted good.
Ninety percent of their diet was vegetarian, however, supplemented with meat every other week or so. In addition to deer, moose, and antelope, the bears caught mice, rabbits, and moles. On one occasion I saw Roam pulling up the grass turf with her paws, as if she were pulling up carpet, while Sleepy watched. As soon as the turf came up, Sleepy pounced on the mice Roam had uncovered, collecting five or six in her paws. The bears would divvy the mice up, then do it again.
The bears led us to the north, through valleys of forests and glades. An Indian summer had drawn forth the insects, the greenery, and the animals. Several times we saw deer, elk, and even a mountain lion.
Though Strom had been the only one of us who could understand the bear’s speech at first, now all of us could to some extent, even without taking cues from Strom’s thoughts. Their minds were not like ours. They were practical beasts, somber, yet not
without humor. Their jokes came in the form of stories about silly cubs, lost cubs, arrogant cubs, who always learned better at the end. When the silverback laughed, it was a deafening, intimidating roar.
How far have we traveled today? asked Roam of me once. She reeked of humor.
Seven kilometers, I sent, getting the number from Quant.
No, we have traveled from the fallen rock to the broken stump. She laughed again.
There is a broken stump on your head.
Roam thought that was the funniest thing ever thought.
That night, as we found shelter from a summer rainstorm in a cave they knew of, the bears told us this story. Each bear took a line or two and evoked the story. Papa started it:
Little Cub found his voice one day out on a limb that was beginning to bow under his weight.
Mama! Mama! he called.
Mama! Mama! he called again, as the limb was about to snap.
“My, what a smell you have,” said the blue jay. He fluttered around Little Cub’s head.
Where’s my mama?
“I think that branch is going to break,” said the blue jay.
Go away, bird! But the blue jay didn’t understand him. He had no air thoughts.
“You should call for help. I’d help you but I’m too small.”
Mama!
He tried pawing himself toward the trunk, but the branch was so bowed he was hanging nearly straight down and didn’t have the strength to climb up.
“If you’d just tell me who to go get for help, I’ll go and get them,” said the blue jay. He fluttered down and landed on the branch in front of Little Cub.
“No!” shouted Little Cub, but it was too late, and the branch snapped.
Little Cub yelled, “Mama! Mama!” as he fell, and this his mother heard.
She came running for her baby, through thorns and over hills, to find him sprawled on the ground.
Oh, my baby, oh, my baby! she thought.
Little Cub shook himself and sat up. “I’m okay, Mama!”
He twisted his head, cocking his ears. “Mama! I can talk.”