Gone is the second sun.
In its place is a colossal violet-red-yellow oval whose truncated end on the far horizon gives it the appearance of the narrowing end of a hen’s egg. The massive celestial body covers nearly a third of the visible sky. And its vivid colors are straight out of an Andy Warhol floral screen-print.
The man knows what the band does not. That it is the leading edge of the giant exoplanet, whose image is distorted by refraction in the moon’s atmosphere. And that the missing dwarf star is simply hidden beyond the horizon.
While the leader and his band fear no terrestrial creature, they are starkly terror-stricken by the threat above them.
The furry bipeds see the empyrean image as a violet-red-yellow monster. A malevolent demon that has swallowed one of the blood-red spheres that greeted them on the frozen tundra when they abandoned their polar world.
They fear the formidable size of this monster that occupies so vast a dimension of sky. And they fear for the remaining blood-red sphere it stalks overhead.
Leaving the band to their fearful observations, the man takes a more practical view of their situation as he scans the landscape ahead.
It is endless, lifeless desert as far as he can see. Broken only by serpentine ribbons of verdant swales bordered by narrow margins of prairie scrub.
Everywhere he looks, the rays of the visible sun reflect the shimmering surfaces of the lakes and rivers that feed their green borders and give them life.
These green belts and the prairie-like stretches of stunted, desiccated brush are dotted with small, scattered herds of the aurochs-like bison he first encountered in the high reeds shortly after landing on this moon.
Despite the presence of water, the surrounding desert terrain is utterly devoid of greenery beyond the narrow, verdant belts of high, bright-green reeds and greying brush bordering the rivers and lakes.
Again, the man marvels at the paradox of plentiful water under cloudless skies. But this is arid desert, not the rainforest with its sump pits. A new uncertainty gnaws at him.
He does not know the lakes and rivers are replenished by deep underground streams flowing beneath cap rock.
He does not know these subterranean aqueducts are fed by the river caves he visited in his detour through the geode-lit corridors beneath the earth.
He does not know the rivers and lakes are contained by impermeable mudstone.
He does not know the stunted growth on the prairie stretches is itself sustained only by surface evaporation from these waters in this zone where no rain falls.
As he surveys the broad, open landscape, the leader approaches him and—with a look of despair and warning—points skyward. The man responds with calming motions and reassuring gestures, pointing instead to the green-and-grey fringed waters in the distance ahead.
When the man sets out toward the largest and farthest lake, the leader beckons to the band and they follow in stride. It is nearly dark when they arrive at its shore.
Fearful of remaining in the open in this darkening, unknown place, the man motions the leader toward an opening in the high green reeds along the bank. Nodding assent, the leader steps through the opening into a wide area of bare ground flanked by the dense, tightly packed reeds.
It is in this protected space the company spends its first night in the desert.
The sun is just beginning the climb toward its violet-red-yellow host above when the man finally awakens to a queer sensation—a feeling, actually, that he and the exhausted, still-sleeping band are not alone in this reed-fringed glade.
While it is still very dark, there is enough dim light to reveal the same uninhabited space the company bedded down in the night before, and the man cannot account for his unease.
Then, the very reeds around them seem to move in a clustered, coordinated way. Materializing into several of the aurochs-like creatures that had demonstrated such remarkable camouflage in the belt of high reeds bordering the northern plains of this moon.
Reasoning that, like their cousins he encountered earlier in his journey, these masters of mimicry pose no threat to the band, the man stirs the leader gently awake and motions silently toward the restless beasts.
As the leader, in turn, stirs the rest of his band to wakefulness, the man perceives tell-tale signs the glade was created and is being maintained by these gentle beasts—evidence of trampled earth, stalky sprigs chewed down to ground level and the discarded skeletons of small reeds that will never reach maturity. All of which beg the question:
Given their perfect camouflage, why would these creatures need such a protected space?
The answer to that question would wait for the next night.
For now, the man is distracted by the leader taking the band out of the glade and back to the lake. Sensitive to the man’s peculiar need for frequent meals, the hunters forage for fresh food to feed him. The effort is rewarded almost immediately as the leader and his two hunters spear several large finned creatures and other fish near the lakeshore with their extended talons. Meantime, the man is gratified to find the water sweet and pure.
After eating their fill, the band pause while the leader and his hunters re-enter the glade and confer about future plans. They decide the band will rest in place to replenish their sustenance and strength.
While the band remains undaunted by the physical challenges of the journey, they are still spooked by the damoclean presence of the giant exoplanet overhead and by the disappearance of the second sun. Fear is new to their experience, and it has sapped their stamina and resilience in a way physical exertion does not.
They spend the day exploring the lake and the tall reeds and grey prairie separating it from the arid desert beyond.
When darkness falls, the company retreats again into the protection of the glade. The members of the band find sleep at once. Only the man remains restless as he falls gradually asleep to the slow, shape-shifting movements of the perfectly camouflaged aurochs at the glade’s green perimeter.
He awakens from a troubled sleep to the intimate sounds of snuffling and of soft, heavy breathing. His opening eyes stare directly into the knobby end of the long, narrow snout of a scale-armored behemoth whose 40-foot length stretches from the glade’s entrance to its center.
Frozen in fear, the man peers along the length of snout to see two arched, unblinking eyes staring back at him. The eyes betray no emotion as the monster regards him with neither malice nor mercy—just mild curiosity about what manner of creature he might be.
Remaining stock still, the man is revulsed as the monster’s snout opens slightly to release a thin, slick, slimy tongue whose olfactory forks search and explore every part of him.
When the tongue completes its probe and retracts back into the snout, the man shudders and closes his eyes tight. Resigned to the violent, gruesome death to come.
Instead, he senses sudden, massive movement. Opening his eyes once more, he witnesses the full length of the monster as it snatches an aurochs in its powerful jaws.
He is stunned by the enormity of the giant crocodilian so like the eight-ton Sarcosuchus that terrorized his own world during the early Cretaceous Period. Having snapped up its prey, the creature makes a lightning-fast exit from the glade and is gone in an instant.
The aroused band stirs from its own freeze-frame feint, having likewise remained stock still until the creature departed.
The early light of morning is just gathering as the leader motions the band through the entrance of the glade out into the wide world beyond. This day, the leader maintains a respectful distance from the lake as they follow its shoreline to the opposite side.
It is an uneventful day-long journey, with the man maintaining his accustomed pace behind the band. Giving him time and space to reflect on all he has seen.
The encounter with the giant crocodile has confirmed his earlier and mounting suspicion about predator-prey relationships in this strange world—a suspicion that has blossomed into strong conviction with each new demonstration of thei
r uniqueness. He has arrived at a conclusion that definitively answers the question of why the monster rejected him in favor of the aurochs it snatched from the glade.
The crocodile could not identify him through either sight or smell, so it simply concluded this foreign creature was not in its food chain.
What’s more, the man is convinced each predator in this strange world is programmed to hunt and eat one prey-species only!
It is a crucial and limiting distinction from the predators of his own world, omnifarious hunters that kill and eat a wide variety of prey.
This exclusivity of predator-prey relationships explains the surprising disinterest the band displayed on the northern plain when one of its hunters ripped open the dire wolf’s throat, tasting its warm fresh blood. Only to leave it uneaten on the open ground.
It was an opportunity missed, a squandered chance for the furry bipeds to share a first feast of the flesh, blood and entrails of a land-dwelling creature.
Such a meal could have been an epochal and emancipating event for the refugee species.
No longer would the band be limited to the aquatic creatures that are its only source of food.
No longer would the band be confined to the watery places those creatures inhabit.
With a larder as varied and broad as this wide world, the band would be able to journey without fear of hunger or thirst, as the flesh and blood of land-dwelling animals would slake both.
The band’s instinctive rejection of any prey other than the finned beasts is a testament to the stability of the singular predator-prey calculus of this world. To its role in sustaining a viable balance between species.
The monster in the glade is only the latest example of this behavior, and the man wonders why it has taken him so long to uncover such a self-evident truth.
The terror birds appear interested in one prey only, the black amphibians. They in turn seem to eat only the terror birds’ young.
Even the wolves appear interested only in driving intruders from their territory, not in attacking them for food.
Unlike his own world, where predator-prey relationships tend to be complex and distributive, trophic links in the food chains of this world appear to be both simple and exclusive. There, predators are opportunity hunters, killing and devouring anything edible that comes their way. Here, each predator is locked on a single prey, forsaking all others.
And that is welcome news for the man, representing as he does a unique new species the carnivores of this world have not yet acquired a taste for!
Chapter 17. Burning Sands
Full darkness catches the band as it reaches the opposite side of the lake. There, they discover a narrow defile through the dense reeds, and the leader motions them through it to the stretch of prairie on the other side. Exhausted from their day-long trek, they curl up on the bare, open ground and fall quickly asleep.
The morning sun finds the band rested and ready to resume their journey. Surveying the landscape ahead, the man sees endless desert as they leave the maze of lakes and rivers behind. His optimism is revived, however, by the prospect of bright green oases dotting the far horizon.
It is a doleful journey this day as the furry bipeds suffer greatly from the unremitting intensity of the blazing sun. Demonstrating a behavior the man has not yet witnessed in these redoubtable travelers, the band makes frequent stops, huddling together for insulation against the harsh heat and casting dubious glances at the giant vivid exoplanet pursuing the blood-red sun overhead. For the man, too, it is like walking through a furnace.
He wonders whether they can survive the scorching sands separating them from the distant oases.
The band is gathered in a huddle as their lengthening shadows are chased by a deeper darkness spilling over the dunes and pooling in every sandy depression. Relief washes over the man in the dying rays of the setting sun.
As the band breaks its huddle, the man approaches the leader and points in the direction of the nearest, now invisible oasis. Mustering their remaining energy, they strike out at once into the inky blackness.
It is midnight when the company enters the frond-fringed oasis, and they soon find sleep and solace in its cool embrace. Only the man remains troubled, dreading the sun’s return when they must resume their enervating march through the merciless heat of the trackless desert.
He does not suspect the next step he takes on the scorching sands will bring him within sight of the desert’s end.
Suspended between sleep and wakefulness, he is lulled by the muted, melodic murmur of gushing, gurgling water cascading across his fading consciousness.
Even the sun, already high in the sky when they awaken, cannot chase away the cooling shade of the broad green fronds shielding them from its fiery rays. While the leader shakes his band from their deep sleep, the man is greeted by the sight and sound of a low, gentle waterfall at the opposite side of the small oasis.
Approaching it hopefully, he nearly stumbles into the waist-high depth of a stout stream that flows from the base of the fall only a few feet into a sucking well that carries it back into the damp earth. But in those few precious feet, its crystal-clear depth reveals a variety of fish including a smaller cousin of the finned beasts so favored by his fellow-travelers.
The leader and his huntsmen skewer several of the beasts for their band, including two other fish which they present scaled and filleted to the man. It is a welcome feast, and the leader gestures his intent to remain at the oasis until the band recuperates from the rigors of their march across the desert.
His two hunters and other members of the band plead with him to turn back. It is obvious to all they cannot survive more days in the brutal heat of the open desert.
Leaving the others to their deliberations, the man makes a slow exploratory circuit of the oasis. The damp earth underfoot is a spongy carpet on solid bedrock, and its springy feel reminds him of the floor of the equatorial rainforest. Scraping away a small sample, he discovers the rocky subsurface is smooth and polished and perfectly even.
Walking behind the waterfall, he sees that its rocky outcrop slopes steeply from the lip of the cataract’s mouth back down to the thick stalks of fronds framing the oasis’ perimeter. Circling back to the base of the waterfall, he notices its vertical surface is a deeper black than the surrounding rock.
Peering intently into the blackness, he is staring into the yawning maw of a wide, high cave.
Stepping behind the sheeting waterfall, the man enters the cave slowly and watchfully. The cave's surface is the same smooth, polished stone as the bedrock beneath the oasis’ spongy surface and, at its mouth, there is enough light to discern its features. He is drawn by its damp coolness.
The cave floor consists of a narrow walkway transected by a deep, rushing river. Several paces inside the entrance, there is a stone flue siphoning water from the deep river and forcing it up through the outcrop to fall back again from the oasis fall to the stout, fish-filled river. A few paces farther, the man witnesses a second stone flue pushing the surface water back into the underground stream which is its source.
The walls are so perfectly circular, so slick and so devoid of irregularities he feels like he is walking on the inside of a polished pipe. Alert to any hidden, unexpected danger, the man turns back and exits the cave.
Returning to the band, he motions the leader toward the waterfall and, reinforced by the other huntsmen, they enter the cave. Passing the twin stone flues, they reach a gentle downward slope that proceeds only a short way before leveling out once more. From there, it is a straight, broad, high passageway forward with wide, discrete banks flanking its river center.
The passage is dimly illuminated by a faint, pulsating glow of phosphorescent lichens that line the smooth, damp ceiling of the leveling cave.
The man marvels at the spaciousness and linear course of the cave and at the powerful, hydraulic forces that hollowed it out of solid bedrock in some distant past.
His musings are interrupted by t
he excited cry of one of the hunters. He is pointing down toward several finned beasts and other fishes swimming in the river’s depth.
It is a discovery that decides the leader on the band’s future course.
Retracing their steps, the group returns to the oasis only long enough for the leader to usher the rest of the band into the cave’s dark opening. Descending the gentle slope, their relief is palpable as they reach the dimly lit, level base of the cave and espy the finned creatures crisscrossing the rushing river.
Invigorated by the cool, wafting air, the band eagerly follow their leader along the smooth stone riverbank. Even the lichens seem excited as their dim glow brightens to rival the full light of day. It is an altogether delightful trek, and the leader is determined to follow its course as far as it will take them.
Only the man harbors misgivings about journeying through such a confined space toward an unknowable destination in this unfamiliar subterranean realm.
It is like being in a trap. With no way out. And no way to foretell what dangers lie ahead.
Chapter 18. Strobing Webs
After a long and easy trek, the company reaches a fork in the river where the leader motions them to halt for their next sleep.
He chooses an open area of smooth riverbank made wider by a slight indentation in the cave’s wall. They have passed several such indentations in this last leg of the day’s journey, and the leader has been on the lookout for such an ideal resting place as the time approached to bed down.
Sleep is deep, restorative and uninterrupted.
Awakening to confront the fork in the river, the leader knows he must make a choice. One passage has smooth walls with no apparent indentations, while the wall of the other is pocked with irregularities and more frequent and deeper indentations. The first is brightly lit, the second shows only the dim phosphorescence from the lichens.
The bright light of the first passage reflects off crisscrossing fins on the river’s surface, but the water itself is still as death. The river flows freely and swiftly in the other, but there is no sign of life within its depths.
REGENESIS Page 10
