by Gian Bordin
And then there was the remote possibility to get off-planet, to return to the home of her parents, claim her spiritual and physical inheritance. Her mother had told her that she was very rich. This was not really a concept that made much sense to her. Rich, her mother had said, meant that she could get or do almost anything she wanted, but didn’t she do all she wanted on Aros? There was nobody here to deny it to her, except if she got a mate who would try to impose his will on her. I would not let him!
Did she really want to leave Aros, never to see it again? She loved her unforgiving world, its savage beauty, its majestic ring that she never tired of studying in all its variety. She even loved its daily challenge of survival, but then she also longed to be able to share all this with a soul mate, like her mother had always been. She longed for the challenge of discussing things, reasoning through complex mathematical problems, as she had so often done with her father. Why did they have to die?
It was no use racking her brain any longer that night. She knew she would not be able to see through the maze of conflicting emotions and possibilities, and she was tired.
When she returned to the cave after having emptied her full bladder, she was glad that he was asleep. Rather than sleep in the nude as she usually did when the weather was balmy, she changed into her loose night clothing. Sleep escaped her. The stranger’s restless tossing and turning bothered her. His recurrent nightmarish dreams intruded into the touch of the night creatures — the soothing murmurs that were her lullaby. So she meditated, blocking it all out.
3
Yuen-mong woke early and was up on the rock when the usual late night clouds were drifting farther inland and the last rain drops came floating down, well before the colors of dawn crept into the sky. Sleep had brought a resolution. She would give the stranger a chance, let events unroll, and decide then.
"Where were you?" he asked when she returned to the cave. He glanced at her accusingly from his sitting position on the floor, where he was sorting through the contents of his survival pack. "Was that you playing the flute?" he added, when he saw the instrument in her hand.
"Good morning," she answered, forcing herself to sound cheerful, while placing the instrument on a shelf next to her sleeping alcove. "Yes, I join the dawn bird in his morning song every day up on top of the rock." She pointed to the ceiling.
"Ah, that’s why I heard two voices. Which one was you?"
"I tease the bird first and then I improvised around his song."
She had the sense that he was not really listening, focused on something else. She did not have to wait long to know what it was.
"I have to get back to my shuttle so that I can start on the repairs. Can we leave right away?"
"No, today I have to gather food and fuel, or we will run out. I had planned to do it yesterday, but then I had to get you."
"You didn’t really have to get me. I would have been fine. In fact, I’m rather annoyed to have wasted a whole day. The guys in the mother ship will wonder why I’ve not contacted them yet."
He still does not believe me. There was little point on telling him again. "If you want to get back to your craft today, you have to go alone." She turned away, adding: "I am going to wash now."
She did not give him a chance to protest and went to the rear of the cave. As she undressed, she felt him starring at her. She did not even have to turn around to confirm it. It felt unpleasant and she quickly took the soap and stepped under the drops of water, showing only her back to him. She could sense that strange stirring in his mind, as he continued to watch her. Once finished, she had no choice but to face him and go to her sleeping loft to put on her day clothing. She held her night clothing in front of her as she passed by him. He did not even pretend to look away.
Once dressed, she went outside to let her hair dry and then again gathered it into a pony tail using her sling. By the time she came back into the cave, he had finished packing his survival pack.
"You brought me here against my will, so you also must show me the way back."
She did not respond to that. Her previous statement had been completely clear, and she did not see why she had to argue it again. So she only said: "I am going to prepare breakfast now, and you should also wash yourself thoroughly with soap. You stink."
His resentment was instant. "Who are you to tell me when to wash? I stink because you made me run for hours yesterday."
"The smell is not of exertion, but of fear," she explained and added in a conciliatory tone: "The water is pleasant and you will feel better afterward." She turned away and started to prepare two bowls of muesli, putting extra nuts and sweetberries into his, and filled two mugs with cold bark tea. She heard him mutter, but then saw him go to the back of the cave. She took the two bowls and mugs outside onto the balcony, waiting for him to join her, listening to the murmurs around her.
"Feel better?" she asked when he came, looking and smelling clean, except for the dark stubble around his chin and lower cheeks.
"Yes," he answered reluctantly.
"This mash is very nutritious, but tastes a bit bland. If you chew it thoroughly, you will get the full flavor of the sweetberries."
He took a mouthful and turned up his nose, but continued chewing, his face relaxing slowly.
"I insist that you to take me back to my craft after this."
Does he not listen? "Believe me, on this world, survival must always be up and foremost on your mind and that includes gathering food and fuel. I am already a day late, and with you here we need more. It cannot be delayed any longer. So, as I already told you, today we do that." She sensed his resistance building up. "No, don’t interrupt. I know you do not believe me and think that you will quickly repair your shuttle, but no electronics work in this world. You might as well resign yourself to the fact that you will be stuck here, possibly for ever. So I see no reason why I should put our survival at risk for a project that is doomed from the outset. We may be able to visit your shuttle tomorrow to bring back any useful things."
"I don’t think you even know what you’re talking about. What do you know about physics and electronics? You’ve not even experienced electricity. So don’t talk to me anymore about your theory, or your father’s theory. I probably could have taught your father a lot about electronics and advanced AI systems too."
"Probably, but only if you can get them working. Today we stay near here." Her tone had a finality that did not admit objections.
"OK, but tomorrow you’ll take me there." It was said vehemently.
"Maybe."
"What do you mean, maybe?"
"On this world, you let your life be guided by what is most likely to let you see another day."
He kept a sullen silence for the rest of the meal, but she noticed that he actually chewed the food thoroughly — a sign that he might be able and willing to learn.
* * *
Atun seemed much amused when he saw the first skin colored timoru sausages that grew in abundance on low bushes along the coast a kilometer north of the cave. He took one of the fruits and asked: "Why do you collect so many? What are they for?"
He is back to asking two questions at the same time, she mused. "They are the basis for the mash we had for breakfast and the bread you ate yesterday."
"Do they taste better fresh?" He broke one apart and was just going to take a bite from the pulp.
"Don’t!" she cried. "They are poisonous like this."
He threw the pieces away and exclaimed: "But we ate that stuff."
"I have to leach the pulp first for four days in a lime solution, wash it afterward in fresh water several times, and then ferment it. That removes the poisons and breaks down the fibers for easier digestion."
"How did you find that out?"
"My mother did. She was a chemist and she taught me."
"Are they also poisonous to these ant scavengers we saw last night?"
"Yes, when they are fresh, but the poisons break down when they begin to rot."
; He showed no inclination to helping her harvest the fruit, but willingly carried the two bags she had filled, while she collected green plants, similar to cress that grew in swampy places. He trudged along, constantly asking questions about Aros, especially about the savages. They seemed to intrigue him, although he did not hide his disdain for their primitive lifestyle of living in small clans of between fifty and eighty adults and for their barbaric practice of raiding other clans, killing any men who did not run away or offered resistance and then capturing the younger females. He seemed particularly interested in their practice to offer periodically a person, usually a captured male or older female, in sacrifice to the craws which they worshiped and hoped to appease in this way. But she did not have the impression that he was really interested. It seemed more a means to pass the time, that he was preoccupied by something else. If she finally had shaken his disbelief about the magnetic field of Aros disabling all electronics, it was a promising start.
The thorntree was her preferred fuel. It grew slowly, therefore its wood was very dense. A mature tree was ten to twelve meters tall, a thin trunk of arms thickness, with short leafless branches of no more that a meter in length, sticking out at right angles like thorns all around the trunk. Her father had explained to her that the greenish bark of the branches also did the function of photosynthesis. She selected one about two hundred yards from her rock and started the cut with her short saw a foot off the ground, just below the first branches. After five minutes, she was about halfway through and handed the saw to him. He took it reluctantly, but finished the cut. She pushed the tree over just before he was completely through. Next, she began snapping off the branches one by one. Seeing how easily she did it, he wanted to try too, but only managed to twist the branch. She told him that there was a trick to it and that she would show him another time. In the meantime he could carry the branches to where the rope came down from the cave.
She had almost finished removing the branches, when she suddenly felt a disturbance and stopped working, closing her eyes, listening intently.
"What’s the matter?" he asked, watching her curiously.
She held up her hand, signaling to him to be quiet. There it was again, the typical chaotic emanations coming from a group of savages, not very far to the south. "Savages are coming this way. We should get back to the cave. We may just have time to haul most of the branches up."
"Why the hurry since you claim they’re afraid of you?" His tone of voice was mocking.
"Because I cannot tell how many there are. It sounds like a big party."
"Suddenly scared, are you?"
"No, just prudent … and I have no point to prove, nor do I like to kill unnecessarily. We must hurry."
They carried the rest of the branches to the rope, where she quickly bundled them into faggots of a dozen or so. She pulled herself up the rope a few yards and came down with the two ends of a second, thinner rope. She asked him to climb up and unhook the bundles as she hauled them up, and then send the thin rope down again. A quarter hour later all eight bundles were on the ledge, and shortly after that she returned too. It was just past midday.
"Do they know the location of the cave?" he asked, while she was preparing lunch.
"They probably know the general area where I live, but not where the cave is. This is another reason why I would rather not have an encounter with them near here. They rarely come into this area, except when they go on one of their raiding parties. This area is the no-man’s-land between two groups."
"Can you still sense them?"
"Yes, but they are moving away."
"Have you really killed one of them?"
"Yes, several. But for the last three years it has never been necessary. They now avoid me."
"Even large groups?"
"Those even more, because that is when I may have to kill. With small groups we simply go around each other. They have learned that."
She again knew that he did not believe her.
"When you said ‘for the last three years’, what kind of years did you mean? Years of Aros?"
"No standard years." She noticed his surprised look. "It is easy to convert Aros years to standard years. My father calculated that four Aros years correspond very closely to three standard years."
"I see… How old are you? In standard years."
"A bit over 19."
"So you claim that you were sixteen and younger when you killed savages? This is hard to believe."
"The savages killed my parents when I was twelve. I killed the first three savages when I was fourteen." Again this hint of disbelief.
"How?"
"I shot them with my bow."
"Why?"
"To revenge my parents."
"Did they kill your parents? Why?"
"They tried to kidnap me and my mother, and my father came to my help so that I could escape, knowing that it would be his death. There were too many of them, and they always kill the males."
"But why didn’t your father kill some to scare them away."
"He did not believe in killing humans. He always tried to befriend them."
"But they’re barely human. And your mother, didn’t she escape with you?"
"No. They surrounded her and when she fought them off, they killed her." In her mind, she again saw four of the savages wrestling her down, while the headman tried to rape her. She closed her eyes, trying to block out that image, trying to replace it with her mother’s loving face. She had sworn then that she was going to revenge her mother and had burned the faces of these men into her brain. It took her two years to achieve. The headman was her first victim.
"How did you then get away?"
"I could easily outrun them even at that age."
She handed him a bread with a cold slice of yesterday’s meat on it. He ate it, nodding approvingly.
In the afternoon, they fetched the remaining branches. They left the trunk since cutting it into usable portions was far too difficult. While Atun broke some of the branches into four to six pieces, she pounded lime clumps into a fine powder in a deep wooden tub. Then she added the squashed timoru fruit, covered them with water, and mixed the mash thoroughly. She would let it leach for three or four days before washing out the lime with clean water and allowing the mash to ferment for a day.
Over dinner, she learned a bit about him, his home world Palo, the reason for coming to Aros, that he was 25. But by the end of the meal, she again felt like being crushed by the unrelenting surge of the vibes emanating from him, and when he went into the cave to refill his mug of bark tea, she fled to her refuge on top of the rock. There she meditated, ignoring his calls, slowly calming her mind and gaining back her inner peace.
4
"Why didn’t you answer last night when I called?" He was still annoyed that she had just disappeared without a word.
"I was up there, meditating. I needed to be alone."
"Why? Don’t you like company?"
"I have lived alone for seven years. It is hard for me to be with somebody for a long time. It feels a bit like being dragged under water, and I need time to think and reflect."
He could understand that, but was surprised by her frankness. He would hardly have admitted to something like this. "Why didn’t you tell me? I wouldn’t have prevented you."
Her glance felt like she was reaching into his mind, and he reminded himself that she was an empath. It unsettled him. "After breakfast, you’ll take me back to my shuttle. You promised."
"I did not promise. I only said I would if it is safe. It is not safe today. A storm is coming. We would not make it back again. Maybe tomorrow." She went over to the cooking area.
"A storm coming when the sky is blue as far as the eye can see and hardly a breeze," he protested. "This is just another excuse for not taking me there. You’ll take me there today. I’ll make you do it even if I have to force you."
Her glance betrayed mild amusement. Is she laughing at me? Enraged he went quickly over to his sleeping
alcove, took the laser gun, set it to a minimum charge, and aimed it at her. "In fact, we will go right now," he shouted.
She briefly glanced over her shoulder and then turned back to mixing nuts and sweetberries into the mash, ignoring him completely. "You want to eat breakfast?" she asked, as she turned and offered him a bowl.
"Put that down. We’re going now. I’m not kidding."
She shrugged, put his bowl back on the shelf and started eating, looking him straight in the face.
"Did you hear me?" he shouted again.
"I eat my breakfast now. Then we can go." She walked out onto the balcony and sat.
He almost lost it then. That audacity of simply ignoring his threat as if he were pointing a child’s imitation gun at her. For a moment it crossed his mind to teach her a lesson, but then sanity returned. He grabbed his bowl and started eating it, while standing. This is what paper must taste like, went through his mind, although he had never tried, since in his world paper was mainly used to wrap things, or for hand drawing. Then he remembered to chew the berries fully, but even so he was finished well before she was.
After cleaning out both bowls, she packed a few things into her carry pack, quickly checked her bow and arrows, shouldered them and went out to the rope. She was already below the canopy of the broadleaf by the time he had shouldered his survival pack and gun and got to the rope. He hurried after her, afraid that she might be playing a trick on him and would disappear, leaving him stranded. But she was standing on the path below the rope, her eyes closed, seemingly listening to something he could not hear. She opened her eyes and said: "We have to go fast." Then she was off in her graceful loping gait.
He tried to match her speed, but within a few minutes she was more than a hundred yards ahead, running again just inside the trees along the beach. His pack was bobbing up and down on his back, always a bit behind each steps, making running all that much harder. After fifteen minutes he was out of breath. He could feel every pulse beat on his neck and knew that he could not keep up with her any longer. Humiliated, he slowed to a walk. She had stopped and waited for him.