I had the gatherer place the pictotablet on Proclamation Rock and whistle a call to the tribe. Each member of the tribe sent an eye over to read the message. Beefoof and Haasee would get the message later in the day when they sent one of their eyes in this direction to update their worldviews of the trail back to the tribal compound and the scenes inside the compound thookwall.
I stumped my way to my storage shed and used my nested eye to look carefully at what I had stored there. Balancing on three limbs, I used the roots on my other three limbs to pull out those things that I would take on my journey. I took out my travel net and tied it to my fronds so it hung conveniently at my side. This would be a long journey, lasting many days, so I packed my travel net carefully. Dried fruits and meats, wrapped in waterproof feebook leaves, lined the bottom of the net for those days when the efforts of my gatherers were not sufficient to supply my needs. On top, for use during the first few days of travel, were fresh fruits and steaks from the latest jookeejook slaughter. It would have been nice to top off my food supply with a fresh fish, but after a single day of travel, the taste of the fish would no longer be appealing to my gizzard.
I added some pictotablets, for often strangers from other tribes could understand written pictographs better than the local dialect of the whistles from one's gatherers. For presents to give to the strangers, I selected some gold baubles strung on a piece of tentacle-twine, some strings of pretty peekoo-shell beads, and some of the better blackglass knives that Weehoob had flaked. If the blackglass knife the stranger had been using was typical of their tribal knife-maker, they would certainly be impressed with Weehoob's work.
I added some mouth aprons. I would have to teach these strangers that unless one was a seedling, it was impolite to eat in the presence of others with an uncovered mouth. The mouth aprons were made of the finest white cloth with designs of crawler vines woven with purple threads that had been dyed with the new color extract the weaver Hoonee had obtained from soaking peekoo shells in the gastric juices of lakefish.
By the time I finished filling my travel net, Tookee had made his way across the compound so we could converse, gatherer to gatherer. Tookee was still grinding his mid-day meal, so his mouth apron was lowered. From behind his mouth apron Tookee's gatherer whistled a greeting.
"I am honored that once again you have chosen me to act in your place, Chief Seetoo. I promise to take good care of the tribe in your absence. Would you like for some of the younger stronglimbs to accompany you on your journey to meet the strangers?"
"No, Tookee, that would not be wise. A single person approaching a group of many persons must of necessity have peaceful intentions—but many persons approaching could be interpreted as an attack. Although these strangers have injured me by killing and eating one of my eyes, which is normally considered an act of warfare, they are so different from us, in both physical form and behavior, that I must excuse their actions as being due to a lack of knowledge of our customs. It is obvious to me that they are quite intelligent, and know much that we do not know. We could learn much from them. I will go alone, but please have some of the tribe keep an eye or two on me during my journey . . ."
"It will be done, Chief Seetoo."
" . . .and make sure the teacher Teeloot keeps Peebeek working on his pictographs. It is fine that the seed of the Chief is an accomplished stronglimb in wrestling and running, but he must also be literate. The pictograph on the last tablet of his I saw when I visited the school were so distorted that I could hardly tell his selfsign from the scratches of a jookeejook."
I replaced my royal-red frond ribbon with a clean new one, and tied it in place with the bow hanging down my back. I then donned a clean white mouth-apron with the crest of the Tribal Chief embroidered in royal-red thread. Leaving my spear in its rack, I strapped on my belt-scabbard that held my favorite blackglass eating knife and stumped my way to the exit.
As I approached the thook barrier, I had my gatherer whistle, "Open for Chief Seetoo." Obediently the thorny coils curled back from the path, and I stumped through, the coils rolling back into place as I passed. The Daylight God was setting as I went down the trail to the south and the clouds in the sky were glowing a royal red. As darkness set in, my eyes fluttered back to me along the trail from the south and settled one by one into their nests. With my worldview fresh, I moved with confidence along the darkening trail through the forest. My replacement eye had opened, and although it would not develop wings for a number of days more, it was already useful for scanning the dark path ahead so I could correlate its view with my worldview and keep to the center of the path.
I came to a clearing where a lava flow from the Great Mountain Hoolkoor had flowed through the forest, killing all in its path. By now, the Nightlight God had opened its eye nearly all the way, and though it was hidden behind the thin, high, cloud cover, there was enough light with which to see. I looked up in the sky to check the positions of all the gods. Off to the right were the eyes of Groundshaker and Oceanriser, also fully open. It would be sixsix plus four days before the eye of Oceanriser grew large and glared down from the center of Nightlight's eye, whistling insults at the Great Mountain Hoolkoor, while Groundshaker went around to the back side where it could use its spear to poke the irritable Hoolkoor from behind. Together, the two would annoy Hoolkoor until it regurgitated a terrible flood of burning lava from its crop, spreading death and destruction over the forest. At the same time, the oceans would rise and flood the lowlands with salty water. I would want to be back safe in the tribal compounds before that time came.
Since the last lava flow had been only twosix days ago, the crusted surface was still hot. I sent out my gatherers to collect peethoo leaves and soak them in a nearby stream. They placed them, three at a time, in front of me, and I ran as fast as I could go over the steaming leaves. By the time I finally reached the other side, Oceanriser had moved in front of Nightlight and its shadow was traveling across the giant lobe, its eyelid slowly closing as morning approached.
Exhausted from my rapid trip across the lava, I rested on all six limbs for a while, while one of my gatherers dropped jookeejook fruits in my crop and I slurped down the good juices and regurgitated the seeds. The winds arose, and clouds gathered. The rain fell in refreshing torrents from the sky. As I lifted three of my legs to continue on my journey to the south, I could hear the rain sizzling on the hot crust behind me.
When morning came, the Daylight God was hidden by the clouds, but my eyes were anxious to be on their way. I sent out three of them to update the view to the south, since no doubt the fast-moving strangers had made many more changes since I had last viewed the territory they occupied. One of my eyes was sent back along the trail to view the tribal compound and check on the lake where Beefoof and Haasee were fishing, since, as Chief, I was still responsible for the welfare of the tribe. The fifth eye was sent ahead along the trail to look for fruit or game, while the new replacement eye served to view my way along the shadowed path through the forest.
The fifth eye returned shortly. It had found a wild jookeejook. After identifying it, it had circled the jookeejook to view it from all sides and had returned to its nest. I looked at that portion of my worldview containing the wild jookeejook as the eye fed me the images.
The jookeejook was eating a small tentacle from a keekoo tree, while some distance away, a large and dangerous tentacle writhed impotently at the end of its thread. The jookeejook had discovered the tentacle-thread running along the ground before the tentacle-thread had noticed the jookeejook was there. The jookeejook had placed itself safely at a distance, then sent one of its gatherers to rush up to the thread and use its sharp digging claws to sever it. This activated the thread, which made the keekoo tree, some distance away, pump nutrients down the thread, causing a tentacle to start forming at the point where the thread had been cut. But before the tentacle got large and powerful enough to attack the jookeejook and its gatherers, the jookeejook had sent in another gatherer to cut the thread a
gain, between the tree and the growing tentacle at the end.
The gatherers had then picked up the small isolated tentacle and were now stuffing the wriggling worm down into the crop of the jookeejook. Off in the distance, the cut end of the thread was now a large and dangerous tentacle, searching about blindly for something to grasp and crush, so it could drag it back to be fertilizer for the roots of the keekoo tree.
I realized that since the jookeejook was coping with a large mouthful, it should be easy to hunt down. I sent my eye on ahead and stumped as rapidly as I could down the trail, my gatherers spread out before me in a hunting pattern. As I came around a bend in the trail, I could hear the whistles of my gatherers and the frustrated screams of a cornered jookeejook, all of its six eyes, out on their springy umbilical stalks, flapping their tiny wings as they tried to keep all my gatherers in view. My gatherers had surrounded the jookeejook. The jookeejook had its own gatherers out to protect it, but unlike my gatherers, who were free, the jookeejook gatherers were permanently tied to the jookeejook through the prehensile umbilical cords attached to the inside of the mouth.
The knife-like claws of my gatherers made short work of the smaller gatherers of the jookeejook. One snip of the umbilical cord and they fell, mindlessly twitching about on the forest floor. Now wishing I had brought along my hunting spear, I raised my forelimb, drew my eating knife from its scabbard, and rocked forward, three-and-two, toward the wounded creature, while my well-trained gatherers kept nipping at the roots of its rearlimb every time the jookeejook attempted to raise the rearlimb in an attempt to escape. A few jabs of my knife-point to the trunk just below the fronds caused the jookeejook to topple, and it was all over. My gatherers cut the eyestalks and the jookeejook was blinded and helpless. Thanking the Rain God again for his gift of food, I pushed the point of my knife into the brainknob hidden behind the leafy fronds and put the poor animal out of its misery.
Since the eyes don't stay fresh very long, they were the first thing my gatherers put in my crop. While my gizzard ground away on the deliciously soft and tasty morsels, my gatherers used their sharp claws to attack the joints on the six legs of the still twitching gatherers of the jookeejook. It didn't take long to turn them into crop-sized pieces, while I cut the main jookeejook trunk into steaks. I and my hardworking parts would eat well for the next few days. No groundworms or dried rations for us!
By the time I had finished butchering the jookeejook and wrapping what the gatherers couldn't stuff down my crop, the Daylight God was high in the still cloudy sky. Filling my travel net with steaks, I continued down the trail to the south, stopping only to gather my eyes during the mid-day darkness when the closed eye of the Nightlight God hid the always open eye of the Daylight God, and the stars came out in the sky, although there were no stars this mid-day darkness, just more clouds. I took the time of rest to update my worldview.
The tribe was secure in the compound. Tookee was gatherer to gatherer with Teeloot the teacher, while Peebeek listened attentively at one side. Beefoof and Haasee were still on their raft at Sulphur Lake, Beefoof poling the raft along the shores while Haasee pulled aboard and emptied the long net with its woven pouchtraps, each with at least one fish.
To the south the view was even more disturbed than in previous worldviews. I was now more used to the rapidly-moving strangers and their effect on the landscape, however, and was not as confused as I had previously been by incompatible views of a scene seen from different directions. I updated my worldview, and secure in the knowledge that it gave me, started off down the trail in the mid-day darkness, with my eyes still feeding in their nests. The Daylight God soon came out from behind the Nightlight God and my eyes fluttered off on their assigned viewing routes.
It was much later in the day that I finally came to the edge of the deep forest and entered the stretches of sand made salty from the incursions of the ocean during the high tides caused by the close approaches of Oceanriser and Groundshaker. Here only a few hardy grasses grew. As I stumped across the shifting sand dunes, I whistled to my eyes and had them give me their latest views. Keeping two eyes in their nests, and sending out the others on short trips high above my projected track, I was able to keep my worldview updated often enough that I could actually observe the activities of the strangers. One of them was resting on a rock not too far away. I could now see that its limbs had joints, somewhat like the forelimbs of my gatherers. The two lower limbs were crossed in an impossible fashion, but those two limbs and the bottom of the trunk portion gave it a relatively secure three-point stance on the surface of the rock.
The creature was dressed in unpatterned but colored woven fabrics that covered part of its trunk and the upper portion of its four limbs. Around the constriction in its trunk was an intricate weaving in white thread. I had never seen anything like it before, and had one of my eyes make a permanent impression of its detailed weave. Perhaps it was the creatures' mouth-apron. If so, I would have to acknowledge that it and its fellow creatures were civilized beings.
The upper two limbs of the creature were holding a thin tablet, but it was made of some reflective material rather than damp clay. The mouth of the creature was moving, and growling sounds emerged from its mouth. In the previous worldviews that I could remember, this growling activity had occurred only when two of the strangers were close to each other. Now, however, this stranger was growling at the tablet it held in its limbs. A most puzzling form of behavior, as if whistling at a pictotablet could make marks on it. Taking my time, and aware of the semi-savage behavior of these strange creatures, I approached in a slow walk, three-on-three, taking care to hold up and extend the roots of my three moving limbs at each step, so the stranger could see that I was carrying no weapons. As I approached, one of my gatherers whistled the Peace Greeting with each of my steps forward.
"Welcome! I come in Peace. May your worldview never see strife."
MEETING
Well, I have been "forgiven," at this point, and the irksome magnanimity of charity is especially chafing since it turned out rather well. No credit to me, however, I must admit.
Since none of us suffered the slightest repercussions from our peculiar meal of the night before—indeed, we all felt refreshed and well—we determined to collect more, and to try the rest of our samples. It's too soon to judge, but our hopes are a trifle brighter about the prospect of surviving in this strange place. Less like terrified castaways, and more like inquisitive investigators, we considered the hours of daylight ahead of us. Jinjur had insisted on our scrupulously recording time spent, so far, in every endeavor. This morning she added a further item to the file.
"The tide rose, during the night, but I've no real idea how much. I think we'd better start keeping track."
"Back on Prometheus, I only glanced at the tidal charts James had made," confessed Shirley. "If I had looked carefully at them once, I might now be able to recall them clearly, but I was counting on being able to ask my imp to bring them up in my helmet display any time I wanted to consult them . . ." A quick glance around brought no enlightenment: all of us had assumed we'd have the charts to hand when needed.
David said, "All I do remember is that there were wide fluctuations in the height of the peak tides, depending on how accurately the moons and Barnard were lined up during the quadruple conjunctions, and that some of the tides are really big."
"It doesn't help that most of the time the rainclouds keep us from seeing where Zouave and Zulu are," I added.
"Nothing to do but start from scratch. Literally," said John, moving to arrange a line of stones down the slope of the beach and descending into the rippling shallows. A few minutes search brought a wide variety of colors in the stones, and Nels recorded the arrangement on the back of a smooth piece of bark with his precious pencil. The crude bark tide table was stowed safely, the first entry dutifully made. I stored a duplicate in my electronic journal and set a timing clock running so the time between this reading and the next would be recorded along with t
he height of the water. The length of the day here was about thirty and a quarter hours, or almost exactly 108,800 seconds. I would later set the zero time for the tide table when the rainclouds parted and at some midnight hour I could see the shadow of the moon we were living on reach the center of the gargantuan planet that hung overhead. It seemed strange to be thinking once again about seconds and hours, for under the primitive conditions we had been living in, a fraction of a day had been sufficient accuracy for any planning activities.
The tide markers set up and recorded, we sorted our various containers, and prepared to search for food. Before setting out, Carmen laid out a quantity of as-yet-untried beans she had found the day before. "There's lots of these," she remarked hopefully. "I hope they turn out tasty, because they're easy to get!"
Cinnamon ran them thoughtfully through her hands, and sighed. "I wish I could try a few things, but I know it's safest to stick to the boiled routine." Richard was awaiting his hunting partner with his usual patience.
"Hurry up, Cinnamon! I want to go down those cliffs today!" He is, apparently, fearless about heights, and I was glad she was willing to watch from a position of safety while he trotted lightly along sheer precipices. He attributes this nonchalance to his Mohawk heritage. Cordially invited to come along, several days ago, while he scouted the cliff-faces for animal dwellings, I had been petrified to see him jump carelessly from one crumbling rim to another, with a drop below of more than a hundred feet! I had sat down, with assumed fatigue, and looked resolutely out to sea until he clambered up to my side again, grinning and not even slightly out of breath. I suspect he is secretly enjoying our misadventure hugely; certainly he has taken to padding silently about the forests, and reporting the activities of some of the smaller native animals with a precision which indicates a great deal of careful observation.
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