by Simon Archer
“The sensation you describe still troubles you?” She looked around cautiously.
“Yes. Mainly because I don’t understand it. If it just felt like a straight-up threat, I don’t think it would bother me as much.” I shrugged.
“What could it be, if not a threat?” she mused.
I frowned. “That’s the thousand-dollar question.”
From a few yards away, the older guard called out, “Hey! Strangers!” I looked over, and he motioned us over. “While Thera’s gettin’ together the gear for the hunt, I figure you guys could use a snack. Garrett, you said?” I nodded. “And Queenie? Kinda a funny one, havin’ your servant named Queenie. I’m Denno.”
The guard led us to a long hut. Once inside, it was obvious that it was a storehouse. There were a couple of slabs of smoked meat, but mainly it was plant stuff: mosses, stalks that looked like rhubarb only two feet long, leaves from ferns, palm leaves wrapped around a bunch of parcels of different sizes. Denno grabbed a handful of hairy-looking beige lumpy spheres the size of baseballs.
I felt the two he handed me. They were hard like a coconut, but the hairy stuff felt more like a kiwi, so I had no idea what I would find inside the husk.
We went back outside, and he walked over to a foot-tall table and sat down on the ground in front of it. Queenie and I followed suit. Denno pulled a tool out from under the table, a flat-ended stone tied to a wooden handle, like a hatchet without the sharp blade. He set one fruit-nut thing on the table, turned it so that the slightly greenish side of it was up, gave it a quick thwack, and handed the now-cracked globe to me. Before I had finished removing the rind, he’d cracked another for Queenie, and one for him.
I expected liquid to leak out, like coconut milk, but that didn’t happen, even though there was nut-meat under the rind that looked for all the world like coconut dyed fuchsia. When I broke off a piece, it revealed an inner core of pale blue goo, which flowed slowly out of the hole. I nibbled the piece of nut-meat I’d broken off, and it tasted sort of like a bland Granny Smith apple. As I registered the sweetness from the little bit of goo residue on the piece, Queenie gave a blissed-out squeal and did that little shiver-shimmy thing she does when she’s happy or excited. When I looked over, she was licking her blue-goo-covered lips with her already-blue tongue.
“Oh, master. It is like a chocolate creme candy without the chocolate.”
I touched my finger to the blue stuff in my own fruit-nut and tasted it by itself. Pretty much pure sugar. If Cadbury Creme Eggs were filled with marshmallow, that’s what this was like. But, even though I don’t have much fondness for sweets, something about this made me take another taste. And another. And then I found myself biting off a hemisphere of the nut-meat and slurping out the sweet innards.
As I was polishing off the rest of the nut-meat, a smiling Denno handed me a second cracked fruit, then gave Queenie a second one, as well. She and I both polished them off with noises that Miss Manners would definitely not have approved of. I was wondering what Miss Manners would think if I asked Denno for the third fruit when the buzzing started.
It felt like I was shaking, but when I looked at my hands, they are steady as always. Queenie was staring at her own hands, so I knew it wasn’t just me. I almost glared at Denno.
“What. Did. You. Give us?”
He laughed conspiratorially like he’d just slipped me an ecstasy at a midnight rave. “Just a couple of tahns. Gives you a little extra boost, for when you’re on the hunt.”
He didn’t come across as someone trying to kill us, but what with the creepy feeling I’d had all day for no damn reason, for all I knew, this planet fucked with my Auric Sense skills. But I couldn’t actually check that theory out because how would I check for something that fucks with Auric Sense except by using Auric Sense? You see my problem here. Anyway, the whole planet might have been full of people who worked for Zacxs or something, and I’d just let myself get poisoned, and now, the universe was gonna be toast.
“Mel!” I hadn’t meant to yell so loudly into the commlink, but at least, it meant that she responded quickly, but not quickly enough because I’d already activated the holo-link so I could look for her.
“Garrett! What’s wrong?” she cried in alarm.
“I don’t know, maybe nothing, but I might have just eaten something I shouldn’t have and Queenie too. I mean, I didn’t eat Queenie, of course, but she ate the same thing, and it was one of these,” I held up the empty husk of one of the fruits, “and I know there’s like a four-hour lag, so if I send you a sample now, you won’t be able to analyze it ‘till I’m already dead, but maybe Queenie already sent you a sample so if you could--”
“Take a breath, Garrett! I’m on it.” Her face moved out of the frame, and I stared intently at the blinking lights on the apparatus on the wall I could see on screen, listening to her muttering to herself and to the various clicks and whirs of whatever equipment she was using. Then her face came back into view, and she was stifling a laugh which was actually wonderful because I was pretty sure that meant we weren’t dying. “Do you want the good news first or the bad news?”
“Bad news, definitely need to know the bad first.” I nodded furiously.
“Psyche! There is no bad news.” She laughed.
“Then why do I feel each individual one of my cells vibrating?” I said much too loudly. “And why do I hear electronic music?”
“Because the sweet center of the fruit has, like, 13 different xanthine compounds.” She grinned.
“Once more for the guy who only took high school chemistry!” I really wished I could quit yelling, but well...
“Okay, you know caffeine, of course, and maybe you’ve heard of theobromine, that’s another one that’s in chocolate,” Melanie explained. “It gives you a nice buzz even without the caffeine, but it’s toxic to cats, which sucks for me. But don’t worry, it’s not toxic to you guys. Oh, theophylline is a really kick-ass one. And then there’s-- Sorry. Tee-El-Dee-Arr is, you’ve got a mix of a bunch of related central nervous system stimulants at pretty high doses, but nowhere near high enough to stop your heart unless you eat about twenty of those fruits.” She paused for a moment. “Did Queenie hear that part?”
I turned the comm crystal so that Mel could see Queenie, who was pouting a bit but nodded.
“Good,” she continued. “Anyway, all well-known stuff, at least to yours truly here. The one you’re probably feeling the most right now is kinda rare, septoxifylline, but, even more good news, it breaks down really quickly in the body. In about ten minutes or so, you should just feel like you can leap tall turrets in a single bound and not like your skin is trying to turn inside-out.”
“Thank you sooooo much, Mel, you are absolutely the best pussycat biologist I’ve ever met, and I’d say that even if I’d met any other pussycat biologists.” I nodded a lot. Probably too much.
“I’ll remind you of that when it’s time to discuss my next raise.” She frowned distractedly. “Hang on a sec.” She stepped out of view for a few seconds, and I heard a quiet, “Hmm…” Then she was back, seeming a little too perky.
“Bad news, after all?” I asked around a huge gulp of air.
“Welllll, depends, I guess. See, when septoxifylline breaks down in your body, one of the metabolites, the molecules it breaks down into, is… well, the apothecary sells it to, uh, older gentlemen, who have problems ‘getting it up’.” She smirked.
“You’re telling me that after this effect wears off, I’m basically gonna be able to go all night?” I looked down at little me. “Given the current situation, I’m not sure that’s something I’d classify in the helpful category.”
“Not all night. That metabolite breaks down in,” she glanced away to look at a display, “twelve hours. Or so. So you’ll be back to normal by midnight. Well, normal for you.” She grinned. A bit too much if you asked me.
“Great. Thanks. Garrett out.” I clicked off the comm crystal and put it back in Inventory.
Denno was leaned back on his elbows, his expression about five percent apologetic and ninety-five percent amused, which honestly didn’t seem like the right ratio, truth be told. “Sorry ‘bout that, man.”
“It’s all good, Denno.” I tried to smile without looking like a Cheshire cat. It was hard.
Thera approached and gave Denno a Look. “I see my elder guard has been showing you some hospitality.”
“That he has.” My gaze brushed her breasts before I took in the club that was resting against her collarbone.
When she’d first mentioned a club, I have to admit I was picturing the stereotypical caveman thing, like one of the smoked ham legs in the larder of one of the farms where I’d trained when I was still on Earth, back when Terra Forma was just a game. What Thera wielded, however, was more practical, closer to a baseball bat. At least, if a baseball bat came studded with thick, six-inch pentagonal plates that had been sharpened to a fine edge. Crazier still was the pair of sharpened spines attached to the tip of the club so that it could be used as a stabbing weapon.
“Hey, are those stegosaurus scales?”
“They are.” She offered me the club for inspection. It was surprisingly light, and now, I could see that the sharpened scales also sported curved serrations.
“Day-um. That is some nice workmanship.” I touched one. “And sharp.”
“Thank you on behalf of my mother’s mother’s mother, who created it.” She took the club back. “She was a Reader, like my brother, and similarly creative.”
“So, um, do I get a club, too?” I gestured at hers. “‘Cause if that’s an option…”
She arched an eyebrow and might have almost smiled. “Kanil tells me you already have a weapon. A Therezino claw but made of metal.”
“That’s true.” I pulled the Sword of the Destroyer King from Inventory. Thera did a double-take and craned her head to try to look behind me, trying to see where the sword had come from. I suppressed a smile. Finally, a chink in her unflappable composure.
“You hide your claw in… It is not here when you do not need it, and here when you do?” She looked at me, perplexed.
“Something like that.” I smirked. “A magician never reveals his secrets.”
“Kanil tells me stories of men with such abilities, stories he reads in the scrolls. He tells me that you can also move the earth as you see fit. His tale seemed far-fetched, but I should know by now that my little brother always sees things as they truly are.” Now that she’d apparently accepted the bits of my magic she knew about, she turned her attention to the sword.
As she had done with the club, I offered her the sword for closer inspection. She gripped the hilt, not a death-grip, but softly, and ran a single finger down the flat side of the blade. She touched the point, let her finger linger there for a moment, then made her way slowly up again, her third finger just to one side of the edge and her thumb to the other. She raised it slightly so that she could slip her hand beneath it and then let the middle of the blade rest gently against her palm as she seemed to assess its balance. She nodded thoughtfully and returned it to my hand, the hilt now warm from her grip.
I’ve always pretty much eye-rolled the whole sword-as-phallic-symbol thing, but I’ll admit, I felt some warmth that wasn’t coming from the sword.
“An exquisite instrument,” Thera said. “It has seen more wear than care.”
And there went the nice warm feeling.
“Well, I haven’t had it long. And it’s, uh, good at what it does. I mean, really good. Really.” I smirked. “But you’ll get to see that first hand.”
“True.” She nodded. “Hopefully, I will get to see it in action when we face our prey.”
I tried to think of something clever to say with a double meaning, but fortunately for me, she turned serenely on the ball of her foot and walked away toward the gate that was already swinging outward. I placed the Sword of the Destroyer King back out of sight and followed her.
20
I followed Thera along a path that narrowed to nothing before we were even out of sight of the village fence. I tried to pay attention to my surroundings and note anything, well, notable, but I spent most of my time dodging low-hanging branches and pushing vines and moss out of my way. Plus, the leaves and shit on the ground were slippery as hell, and falling on my ass was not high on my list of priorities. I couldn’t for the life of me figure out why a simple walk through the fucking woods was this hard. I mean, I was Garrett fucking Andrews, the champion of Terra Forma, and yeah, this wasn’t the game, but I’d trained in jungles in like two dozen countries, so what the actual fuck?
And then, it was like a switch flipped in my brain, and suddenly, all my senses returned to normal, when I hadn’t even realized they’d been fucked up before. Now, each step I took, my feet corrected for the sliding leaves before I even put my weight down fully. I saw each branch and vine in my path before I was even within arm’s reach, so I was ready to shove them out of my way.
I was, well, me again.
I also started to notice details I couldn’t afford to focus on earlier. The blue-violet strands of moss hanging down from the tree branches felt stronger than they looked, and I remembered that the ropes on the gate pulleys were the same hue. The sturdy-looking vines, on the other hand, were tender and fragile as bean sprouts. There were camouflaged slug-like things moving, sliming their way slowly around the pinkish-gray lichen patches on the rocks.
Thera stopped and turned to me. “I take it the effects of the tahn fruit are evening out.”
“Oh,” I said, “is that why I felt like I had three left feet?”
She smiled, like, a genuine smile. “Denno should not have given you two fruits on your first day. It’s quite surprising that you have recovered so quickly.”
“Well, I do have a lot of stamina.” I smirked. “So, it’ll take more than a few fruits to do me in.”
“I am glad to hear that, and I’m relieved that you have recovered because I need an effective partner.” I was sure I imagined a slight flush in her cheeks as she added, “Hunting partner.” She motioned ahead of us with an extended arm. “We are at the place Kanil said he saw the Hadrosaurs.”
I realized that we were standing at the edge of a big clearing, or at least the trees were sparse enough that I could see the sun above us, a bit redder than Earth’s and about twice as large, at least looking at it from here on the planet. There was easily enough room for a good-sized dino to maneuver, and they’d obviously been chowing down because the underbrush and mosses were less out-of-control than they’d been everywhere else I’d been. Still, I didn’t see any animal larger than the rock slugs.
Thera moved to the right of the clearing, staring intently at the ground. I went to the left and searched for tracks. The problem was, there were a gazillion depressions in the ground and areas of flattened leaves, all overlapping. There wasn’t a square inch that hadn’t been stepped on by something big and heavy a few dozen times.
I knelt and focused on one square foot of bare earth, tuning out everything else around it. Now, I could see that there were indentations, like the cuneiform marks on ancient clay tablets. Those had to be claw marks, not big-ass claws like the Therizinosaurus but just a couple of inches long, enough to grip the ground. They were grouped in sets of three, arranged like the points of a chevron over a foot wide. So, three toes, with the chevron almost certainly pointing forward in the direction the beast was moving. If that was the case, there should be toe impressions right behind the claw marks, and there they were, making a shallower, fatter chevron.
Great, I had a single track. It must have been relatively recent for the impressions to be as clear as they were, but whether that meant three hours or three days, I had no clue. Still, now that I knew the pattern, I could see the same marks everywhere, headed in all different directions. But I could see another track about a yard from my first one to the right, so now I had the right foot and left foot.
I stood between them, facing the di
rection they pointed, and looked up. There was another pair of tracks, four feet ahead of mine, with the toes pointing the same way. So, I followed, slowly stalking my prey, one huge step at a time, knowing I was getting closer. I was covering a lot of ground since each step was so huge, and I was feeling pretty pumped, already getting ready to stab some Hadrosaur hide.
I came within about four inches of jogging into a knee-high pile of poop.
Poop is part of the game when you’re tracking, and everyone who plays Terra Forma at the professional level tracks elephants regularly during their training since that was the closest Earth came to a land-dwelling animal the size of the game’s biggest animals. This was actually pretty similar in texture, and in smell. I could tell from the fact that my eyes weren’t watering that this sample was not particularly fresh. That was disappointing since fresh equals recent, and still-warm dung would have meant I was close on the heels of an animal. I turned back around and saw that Thera wasn’t that far from me, so I headed over to her.
“Is there a secret to telling the most recent tracks from the older ones?” I asked.
She shook her head, not looking up from the set she was following. “It’s easier after a rain, of course, but the last real rain was two days ago. Unfortunately, the last several days, the Therizino was too close to camp to send a hunting part out, and now, our stores are running low.” She halted and put her hands on her hips with a sigh. “I should have sent Jorna with Kanil this morning, so they could have taken down a Hadrosaur if they found one. Now, it’s past mid-day, and there is much ground to cover.”
“I have an idea,” I mused, “but it’s not something I’ve ever tried, so don’t get your hopes up.”
“What is your plan?” She looked at me curiously.
“I'm going to ask the earth to lead me to a Hadrosaur.” I smirked.
I knelt where I was and put both palms flat on the ground. I tried to clear my mind of all thought. Bit by bit, I tuned out everything around me, the buzz of the cicadas, the sun on my head, the breeze through the clearing. I let my Auric Sense flow into my hands, then into the earth directly below me. I let my Aura radiate out away from me, into the top few inches of the ground, spreading out across the clearing like ripples in a lake. I tried not to think about the fact that I didn’t know exactly what I was trying to sense, but it’s hard to not think about not thinking. I curled my fingers into the ground and tried to feel something beyond the grit and bits of leaves and warmth from the sun and cool damp just beneath.
