Sister Resister

by Kelli Jae Baeli

  At the beginning of the collection a bright tag was attached to the shelf with arrows pointing to books above, and a hand-scrawled note that said,

  Primary. Much Useful Information

  All the bindings had exclamation points. It was a series of books by a writer named Jean Auel. Earth’s Children series. The first one was called . I knew a few things about clans. The text on the back told me it was a story of primitive people in the earliest history of Earth.

  I was so excited, I could barely contain myself. I imagined spending the rest of my days lying in the sunlight, reading books and eating fruits.

  Shrtz disabused me of that notion. “Come,” she said. “We must find a water source and also fish.” She held a long skinny pole and small case that looked like a toolbox.

  “What’s that?”

  “Fishing gear.”

  Reluctantly, I left The Clan of the Cave Bear on my bunk for later, and followed her out of our library room in the ground.

  On the way through the exit corridor, I realized how thirsty I was. Even with the juicy fruits, I sensed the need for more water. Our canteen was almost empty.

  Shrtz’s voice echoed off the tight walls. “In the box, I found a map Weller created of the region. He has marked where things were in his time, and where he hoped they would be whenever we returned.”

  As we climbed out into the sunshine, she added, “I also found his journals. He mentions the fruit tree.”

  “Yeah?”

  Indicating to follow her in the direction of the ship, she said, “He created it. He grafted branches from other types of trees onto the one we found. It seems he found a way to make them all grow on one tree. It was an experiment, but one he thought might be useful to us. He also left notes about how to properly cultivate a garden in this region.”

  “A garden?”

  “Where we will grow much of our own food. Vegetables, mostly, but also other helpful plants like herbs and spices and bamboo and cattails. There are many uses for these.”

  We trudged up the stairs into the sunlight, and I clicked off my headlamp, lowered my multishades, playing with the lens settings until the brightness no longer seemed to singe my eyes.

  “I shall fetch the water receptacles, you, Story Book, enjoy the sunshine.”

  She set the gear down and moved through the hatch as I turned my face to the sun. I wanted to lounge outside and read. Read until I fell asleep from exhaustion. But there was too much to do. Even I understood that this paradise came with its own set of rules, and we would be provided with only those things we could learn to use. I’d have to make it a priority to read the factops books more than the narratives. I could not read as fast as Shrtz, but I had read almost the whole wilderness book, and it was clear that surviving in the old ways would be a busy endeavor. But it would all be worth it to have our freedom and our health and safety.

  A large black bird landed on a branch and called down to me.

  “Hello...” I said inanely.

  It flapped away again. Probably, we were odd-looking animals to these creatures. None of them had seen a human for half a century.

  Emerging from the ship, Shrtz waved the water receptacles around at me. Six of them, each gripped in a tentacle. It helped to have extra appendages. In more ways than one, as I had so happily discovered. I felt a little tickle in my girl business at the thought.

  “I’ve memorized the map.” Shrtz picked up the fishing pole and what she called . “I shall lead us to the stream.”

  Sinking into the trees, I carried the Merkel and my pack, and a heartful of desires that were finally possible.

  I heard the water before I saw it. A great hissing and gurgling. When we reached the water’s edge, I allowed myself a moment just to take it all in. A thing Shrtz identified as moss covered rocks of various sizes both on shore and in the water. It looked like a soft green blanket, and I wondered if it would make a good sleeping mat.

  Here, the trees were different. The dirt walls of the stream were lined with pretty figures much like the pines, but the needles were stubbier and closer together. And the trees themselves were pointed at the top.

  In between and behind them were other trees, again completely different. One that looked like it had long flowing green hair.

  Most of the trees were full of many flat, thin, objects of yellow and orange and red, like the green ones on the fruit tree. Shrtz called them , a single one being called a . She added that the membranes where the words were printed in the books, were called pages, but also called leaves. It made sense, considering the books were made from the trees. I still wanted to ask her about that little bit of magic.

  The vibrant tree leaves sometimes detached from the limbs and fell to the ground, or landed on the water where they were whisked away or marooned in the deeper pooling areas.

  I stooped to pick up a leaf. Held it. It was soft in my hand. I studied the veins that ran through it, ran my fingers over a soft fuzz on the surface. I wondered if the leaves of books were made of tree leaves. I flicked it into the water and watched it begin its journey downstream.

  The water itself was a thing of beauty; not beige or brown like the water of Pangea, but clear and white in places—so clear I could see the small pebbles below. It rushed with determination over clumps of rocks in the middle of the flowing stream. Shallow areas, dominated by the movement of water, and deeper ones, darker and still.

  Without hesitation, Shrtz had waded out into the chuckling stream, and dipped the containers into the water, filling them and carrying them back up to shore, where she set them down. “Now I must find bait.”

  Twirling another leaf around by the sturdy stem, I noticed it bent but didn’t break. I thought of several uses for it. Looking up, I watched her squat over the ground, placing her tentacles on the soft shaded earth below the trees, as if listening. She did this in several locations, and then began to tentacle-dig until she brought up a wriggling specimen, brought it over to me.

  “Baby snakes?” I said.

  “No, these are called earthworms.”

  I captured a leaf the wind had sent into the side of my head, noticing distractedly this one was yellow, then looked back at the wriggly earthworm. “Do they bite, too?”

  “No. They are not snakes.”

  “They look like snakes.”

  She held it aloft. “Yes, they do.”

  “Or like your tentacles.”

  She paused, considering. “I suppose...” Apparently, Shrtz wasn’t fond of having her body parts compared to a snake. Or a worm. I wasn’t sure why.

  I watched her remove a metal hook fastened to the end of the pole by a transparent line.Fishing line, she called it, appropriately enough. She plunged the hook into the worm and I cringed as the worm continued to wiggle at one end, even as its tiny body was impaled on the hook. Quite disturbing.

  Threading the worm fully onto the hook, she smiled and moved to the edge of the stream, diddled with the gadget on the fat end of the pole and tossed the line in. The line came from inside the gadget. She pointed to it. “This is called the . It holds the fishing line. I have just cast the line into the water, and now we wait for a fish to attach itself to the hook by biting at the earthworm.”

  Seemed simple enough.

  After a long while, with Shrtz re-casting the line several times, I wished I’d brought my book to read. “How long does this take?”

  A tentacle scratched her head, another brushed a wayward leaf that had docked itself under a suction cup nipple. “I understand it’s rather unpredictable.”

  I caught a new scent on the air, delicate but robust at the same time. Like perfumed dirt. Sunlight danced through the pointed trees and made shimmering designs on the surface of the water as a new breeze caressed my cheek. Now I really wished I’d brought my book. Next time, I would. There was plenty of room in my pack.

  After a time, the end of the fishing pole bowed abruptly, and Shrtz exclaimed, “Ah!”

  She pulled the pole ba
ck against some weight, cranked the handle on the reel and finally yanked the fish out of the water. She managed to snag the carouseling fish, held it up to me by the line. It wiggled, as I examined its smooth skin, speckled brown with swaths of red. Its bulbous eyes gaped at me.

  Removing the fish from the hook, she strung it on a line staked down in the ground next to the stream and tossed the fish in the water. “It’s best to keep them alive until we prepare them.”

  I tried not to think about eating the slick, wiggling creature, and instead turned my face up to the sun again. Then I caught the scent of something terrible, like dying flesh, and afterward, heard a crackling sound in the trees beyond that had me reaching for the Merkel.

  Scanning the thick foliage, I caught a glimpse of something large, brown, and furry, moving away from us. Before I could get a good look, it was gone. I stood, intending to follow, but remembered Shrtz warning me that some creatures were dangerous. I would have to read about them before I attempted to get close.

  Shrtz yanked another fish from the stream, and announced that we had food for tonight, and we gathered everything up and headed back to the bunker.

  In the library, she found an old table made of trees, called wood, and slapped the fish down on it, then took a long knife and began to do things I was not able to watch. It was brutal. I’d killed my share of P-Murts when the Sister Resisters got caught in a battle, but somehow this was different. The fish wasn’t trying to kill me.

  Finally, she held up the slabs of meat she had cut from the fish, which now looked nothing like the creature she had pulled from the water. “Now, we put them near fire.”

  Outside, we gathered rocks into a circle, and she showed me again how to strike the piece of metal against another to make sparks and ignite a fluffy ball of tree shavings. When the flames grew, we added pine cones and smaller branches called sticks or kindling until the flames were crackling, and licking the air. She placed the fish slabs on rocks near the flames and we waited, turning them around a few times, until they were cooked.

  Shrtz handed me a large leaf with the fish on it and I plucked a piece of it, blowing the heat away, and popped it in my mouth.

  The flavor was different than other fish I’d had, and much better. The fish flesh fell apart on my tongue. I enjoyed the meal. The old ways were not so bad. I could get used to it.

  We pored over books on living off the land, hunting and fishing. It would take a while to get all that worked out, but Shrtz was a speedreader, and she had already quickly skimmed through various materials, a camping and basic survival book, and methods of fire-building that would cook our food and keep us warm. We didn’t know yet how to hunt animals for food, but until then, there was the fruit tree and the fish.

  We’d learned the names of the fruits, and sat around a campfire eating apples, plums, and pears. We’d figured out the husk fruit was called an almond. It wasn’t meat, but it was nutritious and also provided some protein.

  No food had ever tasted so good to me.

  We could have slept in the ship, but I’d lived a lifetime in tight spaces without sunshine and fresh air. I had no desire to be in the ship.

  I pulled the bed cushions outside and we slept by the fire, listening to the keening call of what we learned were wolves and coyotes, enjoying full bellies, the night air, the night birds, and the satisfying sense of freedom.

  We finished our meal, watching the sun sink into the mountain, and I sighed. I liked our new home. Everywhere around us was beauty and mystery. Never the same thing twice, unlike my life of circling. Circling the city streets and alleyways of Pangea, circling the hopes of something better, circling Uranus.

  That night, as we lay by the fire, I used my headlamp to begin . Many of the words were unfamiliar, but Shrtz had found a small book she called a , that allowed me to find the words and their meaning.

  I fell asleep with both books on my chest to the howling of wolves and the twitter of night birds, the flickering warmth of the fire soft on my skin.

  15

  My days were filled with reading and learning. Shrtz had read hundreds of books already, and she always seemed to know everything I decided to ask.

  We spent most nights outside, but many of our days were spent making things we needed. I had learned to make a bow and arrows, and practiced with them frequently.

  I’d been marking the sunsets with notches on a walking stick. One day longer than we circled Uranus. And there was food to eat, projects to keep us busy, and I knew this life was better than any I could have imagined.

  On the morning of our 31st day on Earth, we got up with the sun and walked to the stream where we bathed and engaged in one of our favorite activities. Tentacles were even more interesting when used in the water.

  The buoyancy allowed Shrtz to hold me suspended in the rushing stream and inflict delicious invasions.

  At some point, she lifted me out of the water and used a very adroit tongue to swab and suckle my swollen nub while I lay cradled in slippery appendages in the air above the rushing water.

  Afterward, I leaned back against the current, my toes toying with her mantel opening, and soon, my foot was sucked up inside her to my knee. There are no words to describe the sensation of a muscular womb pumping and massaging against your foot and lower leg. She shuddered so violently, she parted the flow of the stream, and I watched the dark inky liquid drain into the deluge and dissipate.

  I found that after our carnal pleasures, Shrtz would return to a casual demeanor, as if it had never happened, even though she would show affection at odd intervals by stroking me with a tentacle, or doing something thoughtful, or touching me absently when we worked on projects. It was an easy sort of friendship that also included sex.

  Her sense of humor had improved a bit. I suspected she had been reading humorous books and books on human psychology and such. Or maybe she was just happier, like I was.

  After our dip in the stream, we were laughing at the antics of a creature called a squirrel, and making our way back to the campsite, when my eye caught a strange bird. Far away. As I watched, I realized there were no wings flapping. It wasn’t soaring, it was descending.

  It was a craft.

  I stopped and gawked at it and Shrtz followed my gaze to watch it too.

  “Oh pillory!” I spun the Merkel up into my hands. “Is that the fuckering guard? Cleet? Has he found us already?”

  We watched the craft descend closer, its features becoming more discernible.

  “No. It is smaller than a shuttle,” she said.

  Then I had a horrible thought. “Did someone follow us through the folding-time-thing?”

  “Improbable but not impossible.” Shrtz was not one to sweet-coat anything.

  As the craft descended still more, I saw it was elongated and smooth. Like a capsule.

  “Pod,” she whispered.

  I pushed a wet lock of hair from my eyes. “Is it like the pods from the ship?”

  She shaded her eyes with a tentacle. “Story Book, I believe that is a pod from the ship.”

  “But how is that possible?” I watched the capsule grow larger as it advanced.

  “It appears the pods are space-worthy. I’m not sure we will be able to say the same for its occupant.”

  I stared at her and then back up at the pod.

  “But how is it even here? We’re in another place another time.”

  Shrtz shook her head slowly. “I would have to give that more thought.”

  We waited for it to crash, but as the pod descended closer, it slowed and leveled out, and then gently set down on the ground. I gave Shrtz a view of my wide-eyes.

  “I’ve given it some thought,” she said. “They are not only space worthy, but seem to be space vehicles.”

  “I didn’t know that about pods.”

  “Nor did I.”

  We stood staring at it for a moment, and then looked at each other, and both of us launched into a sprint toward it.

  One hundred meters
used to be a distance I could not cover without collapse. But eating well, walking around, doing physical labor over the last month had made me stronger.

  We slid to a stop at the pod and with a trembling hand, I placed my palm on the clouded glass so it would engage the clearing mechanism. The glass unfogged itself and I found myself staring at someone I thought I’d never see again.

  16

  Shrtz pecked a tentacle at the open settings panel and the vital signs filled the screen. “The temperature has been declining over a period of time...”

  “You mean, thawing the occupant out?”

  “Yes.”

  I wasn’t so sure that was a good thing. I covered my nose with the back of my hand as Shrtz released the canopy with hiss.

  One of the members of my Pangea samegender clan. A Sister Resister.

  The occupant’s eyes popped open. “Story?”

  I gawked, finally finding my voice. “Cassio?”

  “Story!” She popped up and hopped out, landing against me and we hugged, and then she ruffled my hair. “Where the nebs are we? All I remember was...” her words trailed off as her eyes fell upon Shrtz. She took an uncertain step back.

  “It’s okay, Cassio. This is Shrtz. She’s my friend.”

  “Shrtzherg Hodzmorkinshed—” came the usual greeting, complete with the extended tentacle.

  Cassio checked my encouraging face, and took the end of the billowing appendage, shook it awkwardly.

  “Cassio,” I said, touching her arm to get her attention back on me. “Shrtz saved my life. She saved yours. She’s the reason we made it to Earth.”

  “Earth?” Cassio sent wide eyes around the area.

  “We have much to tell you,” Shrtz said.

  We stood there, taking turns filling Cassio in on all that had happened, conveniently leaving out the bit about tentacle sex. In the middle of it, I had been afraid Shrtz would not have that discernment switch, and she’d be all, and then Story and I engaged in carnal pleasures, and I poked my tentacles into her openings and she made ear-splitting shrieking noises...but no, Shrtz seemed to understand it was all better left unsaid, at least for now.