Primal Estate: The Candidate Species

by Samuel Franklin

  Rick had arrived cloaked and quickly realized he didn’t need to be concerned about being seen. He lifted the binoculars hanging from his neck and scanned the area downhill. Perfect, he thought. He immediately picked up two figures on the terrain below him, approximately three hundred yards away in a boulder field. He immediately recognized one of them as Syrjon. Rick was glad he didn’t have to kill him. The other he knew to be Ryvil. Rick’s gauntlet had been programmed by Synster to bring him this distance from Ryvil, and Rick recognized him from a picture he’d been shown. There was no doubt.

  “This is going to be easier than I thought.”

  His view of them seemed to squirm a bit, as though there was a heat shimmer mirage between him and the target. Rick knew heat wasn’t the problem. It was rather cool out and a little overcast. The rocks around him weren’t hot, and he doubted others were further down the slope. Rick hadn’t used the cloak while looking through optics before but guessed that might have something to do with it. He touched his gauntlet and deactivated the cloak. He grabbed his Remington, assumed a prone position over a small boulder, and put it to his shoulder while checking to ensure the muzzle area was clear. In a moment he found them again. With the cloak off, they were perfectly clear. The smaller figure, Syrjon, stooped and disappeared behind a boulder.

  Considering all the environmental conditions, Rick knew this would be a simple shot. His scope was zeroed for exactly this range, there was no wind, slightly downhill. Easy. Rick had already carefully chambered a round before he left the house. He moved his thumb to the safety and pushed it forward to the “fire” position. He suspended his breathing and relaxed the core of his torso. He then focused on only two points, the reticle of the scope on Ryvil’s chest and the growing pressure between the pad of his index finger and the surface of his trigger. He maintained those two points, having no idea when the shot might come.

  The shot cracked before Rick thought it would while the center of the reticle was perfectly positioned high on Ryvil’s chest. Right where all the goodies connect, Rick thought. He should be down.

  Rick instantly cycled the bolt action and reacquired his target. Ryvil was still standing. Without thinking, Rick positioned the reticle on the same spot on Ryvil’s chest, built pressure on the trigger, and another shot cracked from the rifle. It happened so automatically that when Rick delivered the second shot, it felt like merely an echo from the first. Rick cycled the bolt again and reacquired, but Ryvil wasn’t there! Something was very wrong.

  Rick quickly checked to ensure there was no obstruction forward of the muzzle, something he thought he’d already done. There was nothing in front of him. It had been a clear shot. A feeling of terror overwhelmed him. What if Ryvil had his shield up? Shit!

  Rick scanned the area for his target. He could find nothing. Then he realized that even if he could find him, he still couldn’t shoot through the shield. He’d failed.

  Rick instinctively flipped the safety off “fire” with his thumb and was placing the rifle down in front of him to push himself up when he felt crushed by a boot between his shoulder blades and the full weight of a body above it. He immediately knew someone had been closing on his position while he’d been preoccupied with his task. Two eight-inch-long knives slid past both sides of his neck and stuck into the rocky soil, pinning him. It was Syrjon!

  “Not a very nice way to thank us for everything we’ve done!” he said in a polite but forceful tone.

  Rick didn’t know what to say. He felt like an ass, and he knew this time he was really a dead man. Everything was ruined. He just hoped they wouldn’t kill Carson and was glad he’d sent them to Denver. Maybe they would still have a chance.

  “I wasn’t shooting at you. By the way, did you get our thank you note?”

  Syrjon smiled, remembering Rick’s general good humor in stressful situations. “No, it must be in the mail,” Syrjon laughed. “We must wait here for a moment. Ryvil is coming up the hill and he might have a few things to say to you before we finish our business here. I’d advise you not to move. I wouldn’t want you to get cut on my blades.”

  In fact, Rick couldn’t move, pinned as he was. He thought about making a lunge for his pistol but knew the angle was wrong to get a quick grab at it. In that moment of hesitation, Syrjon removed the temptation by pulling the pistol from its holster with his free hand.

  “You won’t be needing this.”

  Rick heard movement below and knew Ryvil must be approaching.

  “So this is our shooter!” bellowed Ryvil.

  “Rick Thompson, our Candidate Species,” stated Syrjon.

  “Are we to thank you also for the destruction to our ship?” Ryvil inquired, but sounding as if he already knew.

  Rick figured he’d better not admit to anything other than what he knew they were sure of. He asked, “Regarding this little shooting incident, I don’t suppose we could chalk this up as just following orders and forget about the whole thing?”

  “No, I’m afraid we can’t do that. Your action has changed everything. As your kind says, that bell cannot be un-rung,” Ryvil responded. He picked up the rifle and, admiring it, put it back down a considerable distance from Rick’s reach. He nodded to Syrjon, who pulled the gauntlet blades out of the ground, releasing Rick’s neck. “You see, we now have the opportunity to know, with all certainty, who put you up to this. Synster?”

  Rick sensed he had no options left. If these guys could get distracted from him and his family by fighting each other, all the better. “Yes, Synster.”

  Rick, with his face partially in the dirt, could only sense that they were either signaling or somehow communicating to each other. He felt some of the weight lift from his back.

  “We aren’t going to kill you. Or harm you in any way,” said Ryvil. “You are very valuable to us. You must consider us allies, both to you and your entire race.”

  Syrjon’s foot lifted entirely from Rick’s back. Rick rolled over slowly, not believing what he was hearing, though every indication was that he would live. “What?”

  “We were alerted that the ship has been compromised,” Syrjon explained. “Its main power source has been lost, irretrievably. Luckily, following protocol, we had our shields up, and you were not able to hit Ryvil. Regarding the ship, it will never phase again, at least not without help. Its ability to travel is severely impaired. If it were to come here as fast as it could, it would take many, many years.”

  “There is much we cannot tell you in case you are suspected and questioned,” Ryvil added, “but we will offer as evidence of our honesty only that we let you live after trying to kill us. Another Provenger ship may come. Knowing this, Synster will be intent on continuing his project. You must continue in your current capacity.”

  Rick sat up. Syrjon unloaded Rick’s 1911, dropping the magazine and locking the slide to the rear. He handed it back to him, not completely convinced he was now calm.

  “Though our goals,” Ryvil nodded at Syrjon, “and yours are not exactly the same, they are similar in that the survival of the human race is desirable. We will be able to help you on occasion, but not in any way that can be made obvious. You may already realize that with the reduced power capabilities of the ship, harvests will not continue. But Synster will pursue the correction of human diets for the elimination of drugs and unnatural additives. He wants his harvest organic. All this can only help the human race, in the short run.”

  “If you’re against him, then why are you surveying villages for harvest?” Rick asked.

  “Why are you trying to kill me and supporting agendas that serve his project?” Ryvil countered. “We are all occasionally forced into service that we do not support. It is our burden. We must bear it only so long as we have to.”

  “What should I tell Synster about whether or not I shot you?”

  “I would certainly like him to think I am dead, especially now that we are all stranded on this planet, but he knows that the ship’s signal would have prompted me to activa
te my shield. He would know that your attempt would fail. You must say that you were able to transport home moments before you were caught. You must be angry with him for not warning you.”

  Rick’s mind was spinning. I must be the luckiest man alive, he thought. All he wanted to do was go home and be with his family, raise Carson, marry Nwella, have babies in the house, and forget about Marcus in the back yard. There were probably a million questions he had for Syrjon and Ryvil, none of which he could think of and none of which they were likely to answer.

  “If we’re allies, then why did you try to kill me and instead hurt Carson?”

  “Rick, you really need to give me more credit. If I’d wanted to kill you, do you really think I would have failed? The answer to your question is in the results of the action that I took. That is all I will say,” responded Ryvil.

  Rick had his instructions, and he was alive. For now, that was enough. As he pressed the controls that would take him home, Syrjon and Ryvil were walking away from him, starting up the vast mountainside that had loomed behind them. They assured him they had the means by which to continue their project.

  Three days later, Carson, Nwella, Utu, and Shainan were all back from their trip, settling down and getting some much needed rest. Apparently, they’d enjoyed quite an adventure. When Carson and the others poured themselves out of the Charger when they first got home, nobody wanted to talk. They all looked exhausted and dirty.

  Rick asked, “What happened? You guys look like you’ve been through the mill.” They had brown stains on their clothing that looked like dried blood.

  Carson pulled a blood stained samurai sword out of the car and assured him, “We’re okay, Dad. Nobody really wants to talk right now. Some stuff happened, but we’re good now. We didn’t leave any evidence…to speak of, and Utu made sure we weren’t followed.”

  Nwella, Shainan, and Utu all nodded agreement, as Utu tucked another sword into his belt and shuffled toward the front door. Carson paused as he followed the others, as if in deep thought.

  Rick was about to stop him and demand answers, but he was interrupted by Carson’s statement. “You might want to check the trunk, I think you’ll like what you see…some of it, anyways. We’re developing quite a little arsenal.”

  Rick walked to the trunk and popped it open. There were two plastic garbage bags tucked as far back into the rear as they would go. Rick grabbed the nearest one and pulled it open…the remains of the leg of some kind of hooved animal. Utu. That makes sense, Rick thought, remembering the two deer carcasses he found a week ago hanging in the trees out back.

  He grabbed the next bag and pulled it open. Four Provenger gauntlets. Rick quickly checked for bolts. None. He was about to yell to Nwella, who had just entered the house, to ask if it was safe to have them. Then he realized that if they weren’t, she probably would have done something about it.

  Rick didn’t ask for details for a number of days. He had been through a mission where he’d returned covered with blood, and he understood. Everyone seemed to just want to sleep for the next twenty-four hours. By the way they looked, Rick suspected they’d been on the go for much of their trip. They’d obviously had a run-in with the Provenger and must have killed them. Provenger don’t just leave those gauntlets lying around. And after what he’d been through, he just didn’t care. As long as everyone was home safe, that was all that mattered. Carson would tell him when he was ready.

  The next evening, Rick wanted to get things back to normal. Utu and Shainan were in their room either making love, taking one of their dream trips down memory lane, or talking about their developing baby. Carson was healthy, thanks to the Recombinant, getting caught up on some homework, and getting over the thought of a local man being buried in the back yard.

  Rick and Nwella were expecting Synster to arrive and he didn’t make them wait long. It was an unusually mild evening, so Rick and Nwella were on the patio sitting by the fire wrapped in bison hides. Barnes and Nobelle were inside. He appeared in a startling manner, directly in front of them. Synster tried to ignore Nwella. She was banished, after all. He had read the report, and had only narrowly decided to let Rick live.

  They spoke about his recent mission. “I tried to get to you regarding the complications with your last assignment, but I couldn’t get away. It was a shame the assignment was a failure. I wanted that done. It may be impossible now that he’s gone. He cannot be found,” Synster said, divulging the fact that Ryvil had absconded.

  Synster believed that neither Rick nor Nwella knew anything of the Provenger Nation Ship being compromised. He believed that perhaps Ryvil had gone mad and committed sabotage. Perhaps Ryvil expected the new ship to arrive at any time and would benefit from the delays caused by the disabled ship. Synster was still working on a theory, but resources for an investigation were stretched thin. He would be lucky to be able to operate at a minimal level while stuck on Earth.

  “We will, nevertheless, continue with the Project. Rick, I will be contacting you regarding the progress of our initiatives and your government’s policy changes.”

  To Rick and Nwella’s great surprise, he turned to Nwella and said to her with all sincerity. “I am grieved that we should come to this. Take care of yourself. Don’t eat any of the candidate species. It would be poison to your system. Wheat is in everything on Earth.” And with that, he was gone.

  Nwella turned her head toward Rick and gave him a dumb stare. After what she had been through the last three days, she had begged for death with that poison in her system. She would never be the same. Her body had taken the brunt of the toxins so that her baby would survive. She felt she had been weakened to almost human strength.

  Rick thought about what Synster said. The candidate species. “Hmm, that’s funny. On this last assignment, I saw Syrjon, and he referred to me as their ‘candidate species’. I remember. He said, ‘Rick Thompson, our candidate species’, just like that.”

  “You must be mistaken, Rick,” Nwella said. “The candidate species is the one we genetically alter for our purposes. For this project it was wheat.”

  “No, I’m pretty sure that’s what he said.”

  “Rick, you must be confused. Let’s talk about our baby. Do you have any names in mind?”

  “Well, there’s a lot to consider. There’s the boy/girl issue. Then there’s the human/alien thing.” Rick gave her a wink. “How about Ryan if it’s a boy and Gwen if it’s a girl?”

  As the fire burned low, Rick and Nwella spoke of simple things that people in a stable world with common interests might concern themselves. Rick felt he deserved a break. The world was, for now, safe from the harvest. They had time to think, to plan, and to hope. Meanwhile, the universe around them swirled with complexities that neither of them could, or desired, to understand.

  End of book one: The Candidate Species

  Appendix A

  Recipes

  …an obligatory addition for diet books and serious novels

  Shainan’s red meat cooked in ash

  Build big fire

  Let fire burn down to coals

  Put meat in fire

  Wait until village dogs lose interest and walk away

  Flip meat and leave for same amount of time

  Remove meat, brush off large coals and season with salt, if you have it.

  Utu’s whole fish cooked in ash

  Build big fire

  Let fire burn down to coals

  Put gutted fish in fire

  Wait until village dogs lose interest and walk away

  Roll fish over and leave for same amount of time

  Remove fish, brush off large coals and season with salt, if you have it.

  Appendix B

  Nwella’s Provenger Nation Ship diagram

  30 second attack plan

  Appendix C

  Meeting of the 3-237 Perpetuant Cycle Project

  Planning Committee

  *******************************

  Preparations for Contact


  TRANSCRIBED RECORD

  Meeting of the

  3-237 Perpetuant Cycle Project

  Planning Committee

  Vote for the Approval

  Candidate Species: Yngorn

  Subject Species: Carnate

  Project Minister:

  Listen and be heard, this twenty-fourth meeting of the 3-237 Perpetuant Cycle Project Planning Committee, all who have Interest be here withheld of all selfish undoing, and maintain the good of the Nation for all and forever.

  Science Director Synster:

  As you've already been informed in your brief, our objective of populating this planet through the advancement of their agricultural technology has been fully vetted by the Algorithm. A delicate balance must be struck between the subject species’ population growth and their technological impairment. The goal is to provide us with a maximum population increase over time without their posing a technological threat upon our return. As has been well-established, any intelligent organism, provided with the efficiencies of agriculture, will have the time and the incentive to develop and accumulate technology. A hunting/gathering society, on the other hand, has the time but not necessarily the incentive or means to do the same.

  If we merely provide the carnate with a wholesome, reliable, and nutrient rich source of food to generate the population numbers we need, the Algorithm has calculated that they will reach a technological advancement comparable to ours within a period of approximately five thousand years. We will be absent from this planet well beyond this time as the Union schedule demands. There is every indicator that we would return to a superior society technologically capable of defending itself. This would obviously be counterproductive. We are therefore compelled to include various progressive deleterious effects to our agricultural product introduction. These qualities are designed to obstruct health and productivity in their post-harvest years.