The Hooman Probe

by C C Brower

  Her mother would sneak engineering texts to her when she could, hoping that by raising one of her own to become an engineer, they'd have a better place to live and better rations.

  Soo-she also hated that life. The constant orders and conditions in the mines were depressing. Some of the families had Bibles and books of poetry which she would borrow and read before the light's dimmed for the evening. Her favorites were Psalms and Proverbs, although some of the adventures were interesting. The trick was to get someone to explain what a "lion's den" was and the reason they kept wild beasts locked up.

  There were no wild anything at the moon colonies. Everything had to be functional. Well, except maybe the royal elites. You never knew what they were thinking of doing. Somehow, they could affort to have yacht races between the colonies. Sometimes, after the video briefings that preceded the quota postings, they would show video of the races and which royal families won and lost in them. Supposedly this was supposed to be motivating to the slaggers. Mostly, they put up with watching them without any reaction. Elites were governed by who you were born to, not if you got elected. Especially if your parents were slaggers to begin with.

  You did see people who became elites from the business or government positions, but the only stories of slaggers ever getting somewhere was in some old legend about a girl named Cinderella, who would pick up the minerals falling from the slag carts and bringing these to the furnaces to help meet the colony quota. She was a member of a business family who had run for government office and failed. But they were still invited to the gala balls. Her step-sisters kept her from going, but she met a royal prince somehow who recognized her genetic background and rescued her. They lived happily ever after, etc. Just a legend. No one she knew believed it.

  That was why she would run on the treadmills as hard and as fast as she could. It became a metaphor for her life. Running as fast as you can to stay in the same place. But it helped get the stress out of her head. She felt trapped in that life. No matter how good she was at anything, there was no real way to get ahead. You were always working to just keep from falling behind.

  Soo-she then felt the whiteness return and an idea to look for thought sending. She then dug around in her memories to find some of these. While her wolf friends were both fascinated and alarmed about human behavior, this wasn't going to do the wolves much good in dealing with their local ferals, both wolves and hooman.

  Soo-she dug deep, looking for answers they could use.

  It was her grandmother that gave her the first inkling...

  V

  WITH A DOZEN SMOKEY fires set in various clearings, the sentient wolf hunters had a ring that extended from in an arc across the forest. In their travels, they had found a dozen or more scents of feral wolves who had left in fear. None had been spotted yet, other than a few wolves running away.

  The next clearing would be their last. Then they would make for the main camp of the biggest feral pack. Once they got there, the job was to defeat any feral they found and then defile the camp so it wouldn't be used again. This was the plan.

  Just as they made the clearing, Snarl stopped them as he heard the sound of the interrupted howl from the ridge. He sent to Tig, "We're ahead of schedule. I'll take some hunters and check that out. It could be that we've got a flank attack coming.”

  Tig had his reservations, but Snarl hadn't been anything but cooperative since the Chief had dressed him down at the council. So he consented.

  Snarl left with about half the hunters, more than Tig wanted, but enough to defeat any hunters they might run into out there.

  Tig took the rest to build the last bonfire.

  VI

  SOO-SHE REMEMBERED her grandmother with fondness. Tough as nails, and able to out-cuss the foreman, she was also the kindest person Soo-she had ever met. Her grandmother also taught her tricks to do with her mind. Grandma would try to sneak up on her while her attention was on other things, to tease her with a scare. This happened so often that Soo-she would keep attention all around her no matter what she was doing. And often this kept her and those around her safe from accidents.

  But she also was able to sense when someone was near, almost what they were thinking. Once Grandma couldn't sneak up on her anymore, the game changed. Grandma started projecting ideas, giving her false perception of what was really there. A wall that wasn't a wall, but was Grandma who looked like a wall. Ore carts sitting by themselves with a broken wheel was another disguise. Once at a celebration, she projected a banquet table - but when you approached, you'd find it covered with flies and bad smells.

  After awhile, Soo-she would call her out after everyone else had left or gone ahead. Grandma would appear out of a shimmer and they'd both laugh about it. So Grandma taught her this "umbrella trick" she called it. There was no real use for umbrellas where it never rained except when they raised the moisture high enough to drip from the ceilings. This settled the dust and cleaned the air.

  Soo-she and Grandma could even make people think it was about to start this type of raining, and so they'd leave the common areas for shelter. That way, Soo-she could listen to Grandma tell her stories of the old days before the cities rose from Earth for the moon.

  No one could hear them, and everyone else was trying to keep dry because they'd only see the rain.

  Grandma had said that she could talk to the youngest, and some of them could do these for awhile, but Soo-she was the first to really master that trick to any way. Soo-she wondered why, and Grandma said she thought it was because she spent so much time alone. When she was running the treadmill, Grandma was often on a bench in a corner of the room just listening. She'd been able to hear Soo-she grumble to herself and complain even though she said nothing out loud.

  Grandma said she would also "talk" to the babies when they were young, and awake while everyone else was asleep. Some of the brighter ones, like Soo-she, could talk to her even while others were present. The trick was concentrating and not allowing yourself to get distracted. This was often how she would find out all sorts of gossip and secrets, since people would talk among the babies when they didn't think they were being heard.

  Some thought Grandma was a bit odd, as she never explained why she did things. But she was almost always right, even when someone denied it. Grandma spent a lot of time looking after kids so the parents could do their time slagging, or just get a decent night's sleep. So she was able to know everything that happened, even in other colonies.

  Soo-she asked once how she knew all that, and Grandma said that this was because all the colonies ran on the same schedule, so the babies were often all left alone at the same time. Those that were awake would talk to each other over a distance and tell marvelous stories of what they had heard. She also said this is why sometimes a baby will start giggling and laughing for no reason.

  The problem, she said, was when they started talking. This was when they would quit sending to each other. Not because they couldn't, it was because they weren't supposed to.

  Soo-she's days in the mines brought her into contact with many people. So she started testing to find if anyone else could send or recieve. And she found some who could, but only when they were alone. None would admit it, because that would mean they were "crazy".

  At night, Soo-she would sometimes lay awake with her eyes closed and watch the dreams pass by. These visions she couldn't say were hers or someone elses, but she seemed to feel when they were really someone else's. Often, she'd overhear someone the next day talking about a particularly crazy dream they'd had, describing just what Soo-she had seen in hers. But Soo-she never told anyone about her dreams, so this gave her more questions than it did answers.

  At that, the whiteness turned her memories back to the present.

  Opening her eyes, she saw Teacher laid out on her side, panting.

  THE FERAL WOLF-LEADER skirted the clearing and picked up the trail of hooman suit scraps along the trail. Like breadcrumbs or a ball of string, it didn't take much for the wolf
's keen sense of smell to follow it back to the valley. His hunters followed him as they went, right up to the rocky edge. At that they laid down to watch.

  This trail was not a common one, and few wolves knew about this entrance to the valley. None of them were feral. Until now.

  These wolves watched and waited. They rested. Across the valley there was some gathering of wolves in a circle of some sort. No other sign of any wolves nearby.

  It was a fine day, otherwise. Now they knew the hunters were out. Here was a chance for revenge. It was time to watch, to plan. And a perfect spot to do it from.

  VII

  TIG LEAD HIS SMALL pack of hunters toward the main camp. All sign was that it was empty. Fires had done their trick. The sentients scouted around the edge of it and paused at streams to quench their thirst. It was a series of dens in a hillside, amongst fallen trees and old boulders. Shale falling from the cliffs above gave an uphill approach to the dens, with no way to attack from two sides. The dens could be simply defended. But no wolves were present. They'd left in a hurry, with half-eaten meals.

  Tig's pack got busy going in and out of the dens, scratching out any bedding and leaving sign at their openings. They defiled the dens in any way they could, even dragging smelly weeds into the dens and scratching them into the dirt floors and walls, covering them slightly and breaking the pungent berries with their feet, cleaning these on the dirt outside.

  Tig was busy with a den when he sensed something changed. It was too quiet outside.

  As he crawled to the outside, something landed on his neck, covering his eyes, while his front paws were seized, dragging him out to the bright sunshine.

  Three more weights were added to his back, holding him down. His hind legs were also seized with sharp canine teeth. If he moved, one or more of his legs could be broken. And already it was hard breathing.

  His head was uncovered. As his vision cleared, he saw Snarl. Smiling.

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  Did you love The Hooman Probe? Then you should read The Hooman Saga: Book 2 - Part One by C. C. Brower!

  The meteor talked to Tig as he watched it land. Meteors came now and then. But never one that screamed like it was afraid of landing.

  All he wanted to do was to make sure his pack was safe against the fire from the sky. But the meteor had called him, somehow. He was there when the meteor turned out to be an escape pod. And opened...

  His surprise was that the meteor had brought a human female back. She said her name was Sue. And she could talk to wolves like him. That had never happened before. Even when the Hoomans were here.

  Sue was unlike anything he had ever encountered. He knew she was the solution to their problems - and more.

  Sue had her own issues, her own reason for returning to Earth. Those would have to wait. First Tig had to get her to safety. Even though she was not as fast or skilled at what she needed in order to survive on her own.

  There were miles of rough terrain ahead, days of travel, and the ferals had set a trap for them....

  Excerpt:

  Tig heard the screams in his mind.

  Someone falling from a great height. From inside that smoking, red-orange meteor headed toward them. He saw it coming from the bleached-white rock cliffs he stood on.

  Then he heard the sonic booms with the roar of a meteor burning through the atmosphere.

  The crash, and the flames. But no explosion.

  Tig then did what he shouldn't have. He didn't do what "normal" wolves do.

  There was a fire. If it spread, his pack could be in danger.

  He knew that if the fire got out of control, it could ultimately reach the valley his pack lived in. He ran toward the fire, toward the meteor strike. Not that he could put it out but he needed to know.

  - - - -

  When he arrived. He was relieved to find the only thing burning was an old snag. Nothing around it but rocks.

  But this meteor was a strange one. They were used to meteors.

  This meteor left a streak. It didn't come down and explode.

  This one had screamed in his mind.

  He looked back where it came from. It left a trail and he could see it coming down off the mountain. It had bounced and skipped and then skidded to where it stopped against that old tree. It wasn't burning up, as the other ones did. The descent had burnt off most of what surrounded it, leaving a smooth surface. Scratched and seared, but not pitted like a cinder.

  Tig's curiosity kept him going closer. It was either going to explode or not.

  Suddenly something popped and opened a hole in its side. Tig froze. He couldn't see what it was clearly through the smoke.

  - - - -

  Sue knew it was a rough landing. She felt sorry for the cyborg pilot Ben who was more part of the equipment than he was alive. Still, she felt for everything that lived, whether stuck in machinery or able to move around on its own. Sue remembered her cats, parakeets, fish. They'd look at her like they wanted to tell her something, and she wanted to say something to them. She didn't know the right way to tell them, the right words to use.

  But she shook her head to clear her senses. As she swung the bar on the hatch, it just hissed open. The acrid air of tree burning nearby flowed into the cabin. Clouds of smoke.

  She started coughing as she came out climbing up over the seats and the control panel. She knew she had to get air. One arm up. Get her shoulders up. Keep scrambling. Couldn't see very well. The smoke stung her eyes.

  She knew it was more blue in that direction so she kept climbing. Had to get out. She lifted herself up until she was able to lean over at the waist across the opening, and at last breathe in some fresh air.

  Then everything went black...

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