by A. D. Bloom
"Well, do the Weirdlings ever talk to anyone?"
"Not as far as I know," said Hank. "Not since that first time."
The thatches of Freezt that Samhain sighted from the air were too large to be a single group. The individual members of the wandering forests that raised dust on the horizon numbered in the thousands. They looked to be gathering the last of the light, stretching the photogustic membranes between their boneless, branching limbs as they angled them toward the horizon. They'd have to get the rest of their food from the microorganisms in the dirt, he thought. Or go to the sea. The deeper they'd flown into the badlands of the Southern continent, the less plants and lichen fields appeared on which the Freezt might feed. It took energy to move a 2-4 meter body around and to thump at the dirt with their thick, snaking branches. The sun here just wasn't bright enough. "A little barren for them to survive isn't it?"
"That's what we thought. But this is where Gellanden was working with Freezt. So that's what you're going to do, Mr. Samhain."
Hank Devlin ordered his pilot to set the tour boat down near the border between the badlands and the cracked lava fields. The bug at the sticks nestled the golden needle of a hull between volcanic outcroppings that protruded from the thin dirt. They'd originally been lava columns, magma that cooled slowly in vertical shafts underground until the surrounding rock had eroded away to expose them, some three meters fat. The out-of-place regularity of their straight lines and geometry said intent to his eye. They stuck out like alien ruins, even if he knew they were only rocks.
The tour boat dripped with atmospheric condensation as he stepped out the hatch and down the steps that extended from beneath. The air had a spice to it he hadn't smelled in many years. He inhaled it and tasted it under the too blue sky as he remembered the last time. Every exoanthropologist who thought he was anybody had come here at least once in their career just to see if they could talk to the Weirdlings. The death during first contact with them hadn't dissuaded anyone. Samhain had come with Dr. Gellanden and Anne. He'd failed like the others and Gellanden hadn't looked disappointed. Neither had Anne.
Samhain left Tsk and Hank Devlin to set up the shelters. They told him to stay out of the way so while they raised the geodesics and tensegrity frames, Samhain's first instinct had been to join Scilla where she'd hunkered in the stubby sundial shadow of a lingam cactus, but the very moment his body shifted in her direction, she seemed to squint hard like she was giving the stinkeye to the dirt at his feet. Suddenly, he'd noted how she could have gotten better shade from the nearby cluster of stone columns that jabbed upwards from the dirt to her left. The spot she'd chosen was only big enough for one and that was clearly why she'd chosen it.
Only thirty paces in the other direction, in the shade of the ancient volcanic columns, the atmo felt impossibly cold considering the local temp, but the feeling of it was such a relief that he wasn't suspicious at first. He sat down on the truncated, planed top of a meter-wide column and leaned back against another. He rested the back of his skull against the stone and turned his head to follow the slowly spiraling leather-winged birds as they rode thermals over the far-off coast. After only a few moments, his eyes began to blur. Samhain felt a small but genuine moment of panic then. He actually shook his poor head as if it would fix his eyeballs. It didn't, but he managed to point his head at the ground to his left where one thing and one thing alone appeared now in clear focus. In the dim recess between the adjoining hexagonal stone columns, just enough light penetrated to reveal the flopping, spastic movements of the well-nigh desiccated body.
The dead leather-wing writhed as if reliving death throes. Before his heart beat again, Samhain knew with uncanny certainty what had reanimated the body, what used it now like a broken meat puppet. They'd all heard the stories from the first Human settlers of the aliens that haunted this planet. At that moment, any exoanthropologist would have known this annunciation was a sign of the Weirdlings. A smart exoanthropologist would have known he was too close for his own good.
Samhain was smart and he tried to run, but an unintelligible cry between his ears shook his mind with a reverberating dissonance. It fragmented his thoughts and paralyzed him. He couldn't get away, not before the irregular crests and troughs crossing his consciousness in a confusing dazzle of waveforms all suddenly met and formed a single tone. That booming note swept to the shores of his mind and bore down on what was left of Samhain in a front he could see coming at him like a thousand meter wave. In the tarnished silver light of his mind, it became a shimmering wall of quicksilver that reflected his fear and no matter what direction he looked, it surrounded him. In his last moment before the wave of the Weirdlings' alien thoughts crashed upon him, he looked up the silvery tube to the tiny patch of Otherworld sky, too blue, too far away, and kissed it goodbye.
*
He woke in the shelter to sunlight glowing through the panels of the five-meter geodesic. It wasn't not knowing where he was that put the fear in him. It was the straps that bound him at wrists and ankles and pressed tight on his chest and pelvis and thighs that pushed him to panic and screaming.
Tsk and the other bug Zi'vt arrived first and they didn't think there was anything ironic or funny about it at all. He was almost touched by the speed with which they'd moved on those fast-twitching alien legs to get to him and loose his bonds. He didn't understand why Tsk picked him up in four arms and bounced him against the shiny chitin of his chest and thorax, but the bug set him on his feet as Scilla and Hank Devlin entered. Samhain made a point to not think about why they'd both arrived late and together.
"Why?" It was all he could get out at first.
Scilla said, "Because you wouldn't wake up, but you kept sleep walking and you wouldn't stay put. It was this or follow you into the badlands or the lava fields. Whatever was wrong with you it was nothing a tranq dart couldn't fix. What was wrong with you?"
"I don't know."
"Is the crazy sleepwalking thing over now?"
"I..." Now was the time to tell her what had happened and why he'd lost consciousness in the first place, but he didn't want to.
"Are you not telling me something?"
I'm telling you the whole story, Samhain thought to himself. He thought it hard and tried to look like his mind was empty. "Do we have food?"
"We've got zip buns. Pull the string in one motion and don't hold it after that."
"I know how to zip a stupid zip bun."
They'd left a crate of them outside with bottles of water. The second he pulled the string, the foil-wrapped burger bun started to heat up from a suddenly discharging layer of Brandon's metal only 60 atoms thick. He set it down before it burned his hand. In 40 seconds the reaction had spent itself. He should have waited, but he burned his fingers to get at the burger stuffed bun. The red dots on top told him what was inside, but he didn't care.
Hank slung a scoped MA-50 to hang across his back. "Any idea how long it's going to take until the Freezt show you what they showed Dr. Gellanden?"
"I don't know. I've never met Freezt, I just don't know."
"Fair enough."
Samhain got a look at Hank's sidearm as he checked it. It had been gilded in gold and he was sure he saw real ivory. Nothing else from Earth had ever captured the light in the same way. The bore was immense, but the sight of the focusing lens left no doubt it was an early x-ray laser and a very expensive antique. Hank Devlin aimed it at him. "Time to go to work."
Samhain, Scilla, Hank Devlin and Tsk hiked across the dim badlands morning until the clouds of dust raised by the Freezt blew over them like thin and dirty fog. There were thousands in that mass wandering together. Somewhere close to fifty yards, the feeling of human and Shediri footsteps in the earth must have alarmed the Freezt because the shape of the herd's edge seemed to bow in response to a possible threat and the larger Freezt whipped at the ground with all the crushing weight of their fattest limbs.
The sound of their turgid alien appendages striking the Otherworld dirt toget
her rumbled at so low a pitch that Samhain barely heard it, but it shook his stomach and his spine in the same way that thunder does. The dirt they raised caught Alcyone's rays and turned into a hazy gauze curtain.
Minutes later, it looked to Samhain as if they didn't want to get any friendlier and when he looked back from the Freezt to say that to the people behind him, he realized with a small fright that Scilla, Hank, and even Tsk were all looking at him quite clearly waiting for the expert exoanthropologist to tell them what to do. "Follow them?" he said.
Hank Devlin shook his head and sighed.
"I honestly don't know. That's the thing about alien anthropology."
"Mr. Samhain, surely you must know something about Freezt. I mean, have you at least read Dr. Gellanden's major papers?"
"Of course I have. I mean I know a little about normal Freezt, but these aren't normal. For one thing, they're whumping and beating the dirt now even when we're clearly not a threat. They could be just standing there and soaking up sun. Why bother with the display? And the trail of their movement. Can you see it? It curves a serpentine. Why? Normal Freezt move in relatively straight lines to save energy. What the heck is this forest of them doing marching around the badlands dim, thumping the dirt of the southernmost continent? Even in summer, there isn't enough light for them."
"So?"
"So what are they eating?" This time, he didn't need to be asked. "Follow them when they move on. But not too close. They can sense light, but they can't see...not so much as they can feel your steps and hear you. They'll detect your breath, too, if you're close enough."
Scilla said, "How close do we get?"
"As close as they'll let us."
"What do they do when they're annoyed?" she asked.
"You'll know when to back off."
"That's not quite what she asked. We'll have to go soon anyway. If we want to get back to camp before dark, that is." said Hank. "And we do, very much want that."
At the encampment, Hank made a fire out of some rocks and a discharging plasma drill. Samhain turned away from its warmth only an hour after the sun had set. He faced the blue-black void of the starlit badlands as his eyes adjusted and the heat was blown from him by a fast-moving wind. His gaze flitted about the dark, trying to see and failing in the moonless, Otherworld night.
The wind never carried the sound of the coming Freezt to him. The only warning to their coming that night was the vibration beneath his feet. When the ground rumbled once and then twice and then a third time to confirm it, the feel of a beating heart in the dusty dirt put a shiver through him despite the warmth of the increasingly ragged suit he wore.
Scilla rose from the fire night-blinded. Asa she joined him, she said, "Why do you look as if you've just seen a ghost?"
If the Weirdlings tried to talk to him again like they had the very first time, he knew with some instinctual certainty that he'd pass out again and might not wake up. He hadn't been ready for their thoughts the first time and he didn't feel any more ready now.
"There's Freezt about 200 meters out. I've got them scoped," said Hank down the length of the MA-50, his voice muffed by the broad and blocky weapon. "I guess they're done ignoring us. Looks like a smallish grove of them split off from that main thatch to pay us a visit. I count thirty or so."
"Samhain? Why do you look so scared?" She sounded more suspicious than concerned.
"I'm not," he lied.
"Who do you think you're talking to? I can smell that fear."
"I'm afraid I'll screw up. I don't know a thing about Freezt besides don't touch them." It wasn't a lie even in the remotest sense. Whether or not covering up what he didn't want to tell her with pater like that would prevent her from reading his thoughts he didn't know. He had to at least try. She nodded like she believed him, but her eyes narrowed. "Don't look at me like that," he said. "You knew I wasn't that good at exoanthropolgy and alien contact before you picked me."
"They're marching right this way," said Hank before he made an almost Shediri-sounding click and a hiss, directed at the two bugs.
The Shediri weren't wearing any imaging gear but they didn't need it to see in the dark. After that word from Hank Devlin, Tsk and Zi'vt skulked into the blackness carrying rifles. He barely heard the two bugs as they skittered off walking on their pointed alien toes with amazing discipline. They made so little contact with the ground and possessed only a barely detectable heartbeat, so the two Shediri might be well-night invisible to the vibration-sensitive creatures. The two bugs melded slowly with the murky dark until Samhain could see only the occasional flash of their painted stripes and then no trace of them at all.
"Snipers? You're setting up snipers? Against walking trees?"
"One threatening twitch and those two can cut them down with focused beams."
"Is that really necessary?"
"Yes; it is. Coming to meet us is a deliberate act. Maybe they feel like talking. Or maybe they're ready for something else. Tsk and Zi'vt are ready for that. Are you ready for what you have to do, Mr. Samhain?"
"No. Not really. No."
"He's fine." Scilla said as she placed a hand on his shoulder. And with that, he felt as if something had shored up all the places that swayed under him. "Whatever comes up, you'll deal with it." She smiled with her face in deep shadow. "What's your plan?"
"I'll go alone. I'm going to walk up as close as they'll let me get and just sit there for a while - let us both see how nothing bad happens just because the other one is around."
"Well, take this." Scilla moved faster than Samhain thought she could. In just a few motions she'd got back to the fire and into the mailbag she carried. He didn't know why he thought she'd toss him a weapon of some kind. Instead she withdrew the sketchbook, walked back to him and pushed it into his chest. "It'll help you relax," she said. Then she shoved him out into the darkness.
Samhain stumbled at first, but the second step felt firm enough. "180 meters," he heard Hank say. The world in front of him became partially visible as his eyes got better adjusted, but the rough badlands reflected the star shine like a faint tarnish on the darkness that seemed to get wiped away whenever he looked right at something. The light seemed so fragile on that dim Otherworld plain that pointing his eyes at it seemed to chase it away. His peripheral vision could make out the volcanic columns and the boulders to his left and right, but only while looking straight ahead. When he looked to the side, the volcanic columns to his right disappeared, but he caught a glimpse of what was in front of him.
The Freezt blotted out the stars over the horizon. When he was close enough to distinguish the sound of individual blows impacting the badlands in the orchestra of 30 thumping Freezt, his ear grasped at the larger sound trying to find some rhythm in it to which he might walk and better mask his approach, but the only rhythm he found there was the one he brought with him. Every step, the shaking in the ground came up through his bootsoles and with every step he tried to match their chaotic song, but it couldn't be done. The rhythm of his steps joined the sound of the Freezt's drumming, and all at once, the collective rhythms of their individual songs intersected with what felt like a single, final beat. They whumped at the badlands dirt one last time together and then let the silence ring.
Samhain stopped in his tracks less than 15 meters from them. Their thick lower appendages snaked in the silvery dark as the wind whistled through their upper limbs. It snapped at the membrane skins. As the approaching grove canted towards him, he breathed shallow and wondered if they could feel his heart beating too fast.
The light was cold and white and it flooded the badlands dark with a eye-searing blast. The length of his own shadow stretching out over the ground directly in front of him spreading over the Freezt told him where the beam was coming from. It was perceptibly warm and if he could feel it, the Freezt probably could too. He froze for a moment, until the Freezt began their drumming again, but this time much softer.
He couldn't guess if it was Scilla or Hank that had done
it, but whether or not turning the light on was a good idea, there was nothing to do about it now besides what he'd come to do. So he sat down in the dirt and simply watched the way the wind swelled the folded umbrella-like skins of the Freezts' upper branches as if they all breathed the same breath.
The first thumps he made at the ground himself were hopeful, but three times more he tried to join their song and three times more he failed. After only a few notes, he'd find himself creating an actual rhythm again and ruining the song. He knew he'd ruined it because they'd always stop after he tried to join in.
After ten attempts, he opened the sketchbook. He turned so that the light cast from camp splashed across the pages. Then, before anything else, he looked. "It's 90% looking and 10% actual mark-making," his teacher had told him. So his eye found the brightest points along the lines of the Freezt's upper limbs, where the skins stretched taut and reflected more light. Deep shadows defined the space between the multiple levels of membrane branches and the tapering central shaft that rose from the broad base and the prehensile, shredding bark-covered lower limbs with which they struck the soil. The dust they raised hung low and hid the deep shadows beneath them so they looked rooted into the badlands.
Samhain held the pencil up in front of him at arms length, between him and the Freezt. He found the tallest of them in the front and held the pencil over it with the tip at its highest point and the pencil itself drawing a vertical line from it to the ground. At a point on the pencil as close to the tall Freezt's base as he could estimate, he placed his thumb. He called that one unit and without removing his thumb from the pencil, he could turn it horizontally and see that the whole shambling thatch of Freezt was about 3 and a half times wider than the tallest of them. Using that ratio as a guide, it was easy to make the first touches on the page that would him to make sure it all fit. Here he used only the lightest and most basic of marks.