“They keep coming at you.”
“Do I kill them or do I just throw them off of me?”
“It’s a fight to the death, so do anything you need to.”
“How fast are they? Normal toddler speed?”
“Yeah.”
“Can I move around … run from them?”
“Not really. Let’s say they’re just everywhere, an unlimited number of evil toddlers all coming at you without letting up. How many could you take?”
“Let’s see. Not knowing how quickly I could dispatch a single toddler, having never done it before, and considering that all the other toddlers would be coming at me simultaneously, I think I could answer the question better by estimating how long I could last from this toddler onslaught, rather than how many I could take.” Rick continued slowly. “For instance, no doubt a pile would accumulate around me, a kind of protective barrier of unconscious or…” he nodded knowingly at Carson, “expired malicious toddlers.”
Rick cleared his throat. “This could limit my mobility and affect my footing. But now that I think of it, their footing would be even worse, given those tiny legs. Of course, this developing mound of toddlers would no doubt create a kind of wall, somewhat akin to the 1415 Battle of Agincourt, limiting their access to me.”
Carson chuckled.
“This could provide some time to rest, giving me a distinct advantage.” His dad continued. “If I could rest, and depending on how long it took the toddlers to climb the resulting barrier of decommissioned tots and how high I could throw them to the top of the pile, though toddlers are pretty good climbers, that could provide me with some precious time.”
Rick stood and began to pace around the table as Carson ate and watched him. “A knight of the realm in good physical condition could swing his sword for no more than about fifteen minutes before having to be replaced by the knight behind him. So, with only my hands,” Rick held them out and looked at them, “and dealing with toddlers, I think I could last twenty minutes, maybe twenty-two.” Rick paused and leaned in, close to Carson’s face. “Do they bite?”
Carson laughed and slurped down the rest of his stew.
“Carson, I’ve gotta spread some winter wheat on the primal estate during lunch. How about helping me load the truck?”
“Yeah, no problem,” Carson replied, still smiling from his dad’s monologue.
Rick had a fifty acre plot on the west side of town that he’d bought two years ago. It came with ten shares of irrigation, which is to say roughly ten acres could be irrigated, which in that desert country meant you could coax something out of the ground. Rick didn’t plant all of it, but he did like to seed as much as he could. It attracted wildlife, particularly mule deer. In the winter, elk would arrive from somewhere. Rick wasn’t sure if it was the nearby San Juan Range or from the canyons, maybe both. For the cost of a few dozen bags of winter wheat and alfalfa, he could be assured of attracting and perpetuating the populations of the game he loved the most. It was an easy choice. Some people bought their grain-fattened meat at the store. He attracted and killed his forage-fed game from the field. He felt it was his right as a human, his right as a born predatory animal. He called this right and the land, his primal estate.
For Rick, diet went further than preference. With past health issues, the type of foods he consumed made all the difference, and it would with Carson. Rick considered Carson’s cancer an issue of diet. It was a disease of affluence. It must come from the abundance of continual and misappropriated foods of affluence.
Carson had been diagnosed two years before and they had been battling with the healthcare process ever since. The current government system required certain drugs which Rick didn’t agree with. He’d read the literature. He’d familiarized himself with all the studies relevant to Carson’s type of cancer and knew what the government required wasn’t the correct way to treat it.
Many doctors agreed with him, but they weren’t the ones with the government who made the decisions. What Rick had researched wasn’t important to administrators. Only the government protocol was acceptable, and if he didn’t comply within six months, he would be required to pay twice the amount for both Carson’s insurance policy and his own, since he was the legal guardian now.
It was an impossible decision. He could continue to treat Carson as he knew, intellectually, was the proper treatment, and lie about complying with the government’s treatment so he could keep his current insurance coverage, and if discovered, lose all coverage for himself and Carson. Or, he could outwardly abandon the government’s required treatment and pay twice the amount for anything that might be needed in the future. And he would give Sarah an opening to take Carson back. He felt like he was being blackmailed.
So far, Carson was responding to his diet change. But whatever had started his cancer had been a long time coming. It would take a while to get him out of it. The question is, would the government bureaucrats allow them the time.
Rick was determined. He had Carson on a wild game and vegetable only diet, restricting his carbohydrates to vegetables only, with rice very rarely as an occasional treat. His son was in a ketogenic state that provided little blood glucose, the cancer’s favorite food. With his body able to use fats and ketones as energy and the cancer being starved, his tumor had been reduced in size over a period of six months while they waited for the mandatory operation followed by chemotherapy, if they chose to cooperate. The only good thing about socialized medicine was that the lousy treatments the government required arrived at the end of a long waiting period. Meanwhile, Rick’s ex-wife knew of his real plan for Carson’s health and tried to derail it at every juncture.
As Carson and his dad finished getting the bags and the spreader in the truck, the sun began to show on the horizon. “You’d better get ready for school.”
Rick would drive out to his land during lunch and spread the seed. That was one of the advantages of working for the government in a small town in the remote southwest. He could take an extra-long lunch, especially if he wasn’t eating it, to do some of the things he wanted to do. But this morning he was intent on taking another look at something he’d noticed Monday evening, just before he’d left for home.
Rick worked for the National Security Agency; as he saw it, hopefully the last step in an undistinguished career with the federal government. It had all started with the Marine Corps, then the Defense Intelligence Agency, then the NSA. All he wanted now was to retire. He was four years away and just hoped to serve his time in this quiet little town and be done.
Lately, Rick believed he was either paranoid or someone was following him, though he knew it was probably both. He’d gotten this feeling only rarely, but he’d never been wrong about it. Rick did operate at a covert offsite and his front for the office was that he worked as a computer networking consultant. Actually, that’s what he really did, except it was for the government regarding satellite communications, mostly of the heavily encoded foreign type that were picked up by some radio telescopes in that Four Corners area. Rick shared his office with two others who assisted with their work, both good people. He could have done his work anywhere in the southwest, but he’d chosen that area for its diverse natural habitat, archeology, and culture. Nowhere, so far as he was concerned, offered a better mix. Now he seemed to be looking over his shoulder a lot.
Monday had been like any other, except for one thing. A transmission came in that was very strange. He’d seen it before when space garbage slowly passed between an orbiting satellite and the terrestrial radio telescope receiving its signal. The data signal had the look of something passing in front of the satellite. Rick checked all other sources to see if a spy satellite or something else he wasn’t aware of was in that area, and he found nothing. As a test and a precaution, he’d programmed signals to run all night long to that satellite and others along a predicted trajectory to check if he could capture a similar signature. He knew the chances he would see the phenomenon again were slim, but he wanted
to try.
This morning he would take a look at the results. He doubted he’d discovered anything, but it had been bugging him all night. Rick spent all morning checking the results of the program he’d filed, but found nothing. He knew it wasn’t nothing. Something is never nothing. He was smart enough to know that.
After four hours Tuesday morning, he’d had enough and decided to spend his lunch hour seeding his land. It was only a ten-minute drive and he arrived in a contemplative state. His mind was still working on that phenomenon.
Rick unloaded his push spreader and half the bags of seed. It was too late in the year to do this and he knew it, but he’d been busy completing a big project. He already had the seed, so he’d try to make it work since it had been an unusually warm autumn.
The seed needed time to sprout before it got killed by frost and, chances were, it would be killed. He’d get some exercise and see. The ten acres that were clear enough for him to spread seed had been an alfalfa field once, and the rest of the land was covered with the typical scrub juniper and pinion pine. The rest of the plot ran down to a ravine which ended on the edge of a canyon. It was a great hunting area, full of jackrabbits and coyote in addition to the deer and elk. But aside from taking a few jackrabbit every once in a while, Rick reserved his hunting there mostly to big game. Unless he was going to put a hundred pounds of meat in the freezer, he didn’t want to heat up the area.
Rick spent about an hour walking his land, spreading the seed, knowing it would probably come to nothing. He packed up his truck and headed back toward town. Driving over the next hill, he was immediately confronted by an SUV pulled over on the other side of the road. A man was changing his tire and Rick figured he’d stop to help. He unconsciously unzipped his jacket, giving him easier access to his sidearm, as he pulled to the SUV’s side of the road, nosed in to its front grill. He left the truck running, unplugged his cell phone from the charger, punched in the password to activate it, and put it in his pocket. He stepped out the door, leaving it open. The man looked up from his work on the front left tire. “How ya doin’?” Rick greeted him, thinking he might be a nearby land owner.
“Oh, could be better,” said the stranger as he crouched to pick up the spare.
Rick checked out the vehicle as he approached. He idly pressed his hand onto the front left quarter panel. It was this year’s model SUV Cadillac. He didn’t see many of these around.
Rick thought it strange the man didn’t stand to offer his hand for a shake. “Need any help?”
“Nah, making pretty good progress,” he said as he picked up the spare and wrestled it in place.
“Nice truck,” commented Rick.
“Thanks. Runs okay when it’s got four tires,” he responded while wrestling the tire into place.
“Do you have land down this way by any chance?” Rick examined the man. He was about mid to late thirties, well dressed, black hair. He was kneeling but he looked tall. He smelled of money. Well-funded.
“No, I’m just out for a drive,” the man said as he looked up at Rick and scratched his cheek with a black hand full of road dirt.
Bad liar, Rick thought and smiled. “You just got dirt all over your face when you scratched it like that.” Rick’s way of telling him that he knew he’d just been lied to. The man went back to tightening nuts. Rick looked at the tire lying in front of him. Gator!
He immediately became much more alert and scanned around the vehicle, his eyes landing on the paint job of the new SUV. There were numerous light scrapes down the side of the door; in fact, they were down the entire length of the vehicle. Rick had the same scrapes down the side of his Jeep. They came from the trees on the narrow back roads. Rick smiled to himself with satisfaction. “You must have been out on these back trails. Looks like you’ve got some pretty nasty scrapes here. Too bad, but they do buff out.” Rick knew he was being a little too friendly now, maybe to the point of being obvious. But this was a challenge for him, to see where this would go. If he denies it then he must be following me, Rick thought.
“No, I’m not sure how that happened.”
Rick parted his jacket and unconsciously put his hand on his belt, just in front of his pistol. “I’m Rick Thompson. I was just out for a drive, too.” Rick put out his hand. “Sure you don’t need any help?” Rick thought, let’s see what this asshole does now.
“Tony Carrian.” He shook Rick's hand after wiping it on his pants. “Nice to meet you, and, no, but thanks for stopping.”
“See you around then.” Rick walked back to his truck while keeping the corner of his eye on Tony and listening for movement when his back was momentarily turned. He memorized the license plate as he pulled away and wrote it down the first chance he got. Why has that asshole been following me?
Chapter 6
Yootu Restricted to his cell
Yootu put his fish on the heat plate and surrounded it with the green stalks of some new kind of plant that they’d recently brought him. In the customs of his people, he would cook the plant, eat a small bite, and wait for hours to see how he felt. The fish was his favorite. He didn’t eat any red meat because he knew it might be human.
He missed sharing his customs with the people of his tribe. But he was wise. And he had learned patience. He sat on a simple stool next to his sizzling food and watched the steam rise. Yootu missed his dogs. He’d had many of them. They were his greatest company when people had been scared of him.
He glanced up at the school-aged Provenger watching him from behind the large window. He smiled while thinking that someday he would like to kill them all. Because, someday, they would grow into adult Provenger.
Emotionally, Yootu was feeling his age. He’d been a prisoner since he’d been taken during a battle which, to him, seemed to have happened many lifetimes ago.
Without their knowing, he had managed to learn their language. From that day on, anything they said, he remembered. His excellent memory kept every detail, every word, and he made it his own. He had the unique ability to remember what one of them had said, even without knowing the word or language they used. When he later learned the word or language they had spoken, he then had the knowledge of what they’d said. He did all this while acting the animal that they expected him to be. He never let on any understanding. Even during his captivity, except for communicating a few meager preferences to make his lodgings a little more bearable, he maintained the image of an idiot.
Despite the stress he’d endured, he was in excellent physical condition. The Provenger saw to it. He had nothing but the best nutrition and physical care. Yootu was an imposing human specimen. He was allowed access to a vast array of strengthening equipment and made good use of it. Though he was covered with scars from the sparring bouts that went a little too far, any injuries of significance were carefully repaired by the excellent Provenger surgeons. Yootu wore his light hair long and preferred his beard short. His alert, bright blue eyes, unique among humans from his time, seemed to challenge the Provenger males and delight their females.
Provenger males would take him to the rings where they would fight him. This was the only reason they kept him. When he was abducted, he had been fighting Layrd, a powerful Provenger, and had very nearly gotten the best of him, with the help of his father. Since that time, the stories of him had circulated aboard the ship. Since Provenger males loved to fight, they kept him as an alternative to their usual methods of sparring. He provided them with something different.
Slowly, over his ten years of captivity, Yootu had accumulated a vast knowledge of the Provenger merely from listening to their conversation. When he first started learning their secrets, he imagined that one day, when the time was right, he would blurt out, in their own language, what he knew and lay out for them their stupidity and arrogance in allowing him to become so informed. But the more he learned, the more he began to realize that he may have a purpose.
It had been a similar situation with his tribe. As he’d grown from a boy, he noticed that he w
as different. He eventually realized his purpose. It had been to free his people from the Provenger. When this same process of realization had happened after his abduction during the rebellion, he recognized the pattern.
It was now his purpose to remain the idiot in the eyes of the Provenger, allow them to speak of all their activities, their science, and their abilities. He would accumulate as much of their knowledge as possible and wait for the day he would be given the opportunity to destroy them. He would take his final revenge for his father, his mother, his entire tribe, and the life he could never have. This was his sole focus.
It was remarkable, he thought, what Provenger would reveal in his presence when they thought he couldn’t understand them. The males were not his only source of information. The Provenger females were a passionate group, he learned. Apparently a small percentage of their many millions were deviant enough that they obtained great satisfaction from sleeping with him. Sex with a “sub-Provenger” seemed to offer them a sexual charge and psychological boost they couldn’t get otherwise. He’d even figured out ways to maximize the information he could get from them. Since many Provenger had learned his tribal language for the introduction Contact Protocol and never forgotten it, speaking with him was merely a mental exercise for them to maintain these skills. For Yootu, it was a free flow of information that he took full advantage of. They loved to impress him with their knowledge and enjoyed sounding smart. And he would give them every opportunity. He grew adept at acting dumb, but then it was easy to give someone what they expected.
Primal Estate: The Candidate Species Page 7