Cooper was as alert as ever. Huston wondered how much he actually approved of seeking out a potential enemy on their own terrain. Tarma was busy with his notebook. The minister felt deep gratitude and affection for his friend. The man joked a lot, which Huston appreciated. Maybe inconsistent with his profession, Huston couldn’t stand taking things seriously, unless it was one of the few subjects worth being serious about. The man was also intensely curious and engaging. Beneath the humor and the general pirate-facade, Randy Tarma wanted nothing more than to chase and capture the depths of the world. Huston had seen his documentaries; he was brilliant.
The minister looked to his right. Kit was a few steps behind him, busily guiding a drone a mile or so above. Flight teams were managing the larger drones, but she had access to a smaller one which she’d summoned to monitor the terrain around them.
“Oh my gosh.” She suddenly said.
“What’s up?” Huston asker her quickly, stopping to look at her screen.
“Look at those!” She moved her fingers to zoom in.
Hundreds of brown beasts— he had no other word — were running on the window she’d maximized.
“It’s a herd!” She yelled excitedly.
Huston smiled at her happiness. She was a naturalist at heart, by training and informal background, He knew how special this was for her. He felt the same way. Spring was alive here. Finally, large mammals.
“We need to go” Huston said, watching them gallop across rolling, grassy hills.
They looked like buffalo, but bigger. Much bigger.
“How big do you think those are?” Tarma asked. He’d ran up to watch alongside them.
“Elephant-sized.” Kit answered through a grin.
“I know elephants, Kit. Those aren’t elephants.” Tarma replied.
He was joking, but he was right. Their bodies were thickly muscled under shaggy brown fur, and their faces were something like a mix between a buffalo and an elk, with four long horns sticking out horizontally and vertically from the tops of their heads.
“There’s a pass beyond a minor peak ahead of us. 30 degrees southeast.” She continued, turning to Huston. “Do you want to head there and get closer?”
Her face was so close to his. It was the prettiest smile he’d ever seen.
“Yeah. Cooper, yeah?” He said, looking to the military experience.
“Game means predators.” Cooper said roughly. “That probe we sent last Summer had some images of the region for us when we got here, but we don’t have anything close to a complete idea of what kills out here. I’m happier on the ridge, but I go where you go, pastor.”
“Ok.” Huston really wanted to see them. “Let’s do it.”
“But I decide where we camp.” Coop added.
Up close, they were devastatingly massive. And fast. The thunder of their footfalls tore across the field as the agile monsters ripped the sod in their wake, turning and cutting in unspoken unison until they came to a heaping rest in the center of the plain some half mile from the humans’ hiding spot amidst the trees. Huston was reminded of a million other moments when the athleticism and scale of wild animals had reawakened him to the reality of what ‘wild’ was. If they had predators, they were as concerning to Huston as they were to Cooper, who spent most of the day looking for danger.
As magical as the display was, it was also a reminder of the world man had been raised in- of the fear man had been raised in. The guns in Cooper’s control were the only things that kept them atop any food chain on Earth. He wondered whether the weapons could topple one of the beasts grazing and sleepily laying about in the field.
“We camp up there.” Cooper said a few hours before daylight broke.
“Huston looked to where Coop was pointing. A few hundred yards up a large hill, a small terrace backed against boulders strewn there some time in the planet’s past. There was room enough for a small house. Densely packed pines wrapped around the small ring of opening. They’d be able to see the beasts.
He needed a better name for the giants loafing about in the grass.
It didn’t take them long to hike the rocky hillside. They’d erected the tent and built walls of downed trunks kept in place by sticks they’d spiked into the ground. It’d block the wind and anything they couldn’t see approaching from the sides.
Night was crisp, but consistent with the nights before it. Real warmth was coming, though the nights would probably be comfortable here even in the heart of summer.
Of all the things that washed Huston in a sea of alien normal, only the stars couldn’t be adjusted to. As abstract as the sense of galactic movement was, it could be dizzying. All the movement and energy in the Universe, bound in a super-structure of laws both understood and not.
“Pastor,” Cooper began as they lay around staring at a field of infinite possibilities above.
“Mmm?” Huston had asked to be referred to by his name, but Cooper had proven as resistant as most.
He was holding something and gesturing.
Huston stood. As bright as the clouds of stars were, the forest blanketed everyone in black. He stumbled over to take the mobile unit from Cooper’s hand.
“Hey Scott. Gangotra, you there too?”
Huston watched Cooper and Tarma exchange knowing smiles. The filmmaker’s chuckles drew Kit’s attention, though only for a moment before turning her eyes back to the sky.
“Huston, find your Clouds yet?” Scott said, his voice relatively clear.
“You know I haven’t.”
“Hello, Huston. We’ve been monitoring some of your progress during the day.” Gangotra said.
“And heavily monitoring the areas around us.” Scott added. “No sign of the Clouds. Not that we’ve ever caught them in scans.”
“I don’t have many ideas. We are going to circle back, summit the big boy tomorrow.” Huston responded.
“In many ways, it is enough that we know where they aren’t. It wins us some time and some calm. We’ve had teams extending our visibility and perimeter defense radius.” Scott said in a measured voice. “We’ve pushed our network to its limit for the time being.”
“Are the miners running again?”
“All resource acquisition has resumed.”
“Fully automated means fully governed, Huston. Bots and machines won’t make mistakes if they find anybody out there.” Gangotra contributed.
“That’s good.” Huston responded.
Scott shared all of Huston’s concerns that a chance encounter would go wrong and escalate into something irredeemable.
“Everything is controlled here, Huston. Glad to get a closer look from having you walk out there, but pull-back after the summit tomorrow. Kit thinks your idea about alpine vegetation makes sense, so I want you to do that before returning here. Don’t spend too much time cuddling your furry friends.”
Huston smiled. He did want to cuddle the beasts, but he suspected Scott was talking about Tarma.
Huston handed the unit back to Cooper. They’d disconnected.
“What was that chuckle about?” Huston asked Cooper and Tarma.
“I hear Gangotra is with Scott most nights.” Cooper answered with a straight face.
“Gangy is with somebody most nights.” Tarma corrected him with a grin.
“You’d know.” Kit added. She was writing in her notebook again.
Cooper laughed.
“What?” Huston asked. He wasn’t sure what they were talking about.
“Apparently Gangotra has developed relationships.” Kit said, nodding to Tarma. “It isn’t a big deal.”
“How dare you?” Tarma growled. “It is the biggest of deals.”
“Gross. Shut it.” Huston snapped to Tarma.
So Gangotra had become romantic with some of their fellow colonists. He wasn’t surprised.
He didn’t believe that Tarma had been one of them, but it was possible.
“Alright, it’s my time. Night, y’all.” Huston said to the others.
He could hear somebody following him a few minutes later. Kit zipped open the tent and closed it behind her. She came and laid at his side.
Huston could hear Tarma and Cooper talking by the fire.
“What do you think of the Gangotra stuff?” She asked, their faces inches apart.
Huston thought a lot of things about Gangotra stuff. In the moment, he couldn’t think. He felt his heartbeat would betray him if he let the silence linger too long.
“I’m happy that he is living.” He said carefully. He wanted to hold her.
He felt her warm fingers brush against his palm. They may have gotten there by accident. He didn’t have the confidence to think otherwise.
Without thought, surprising himself, he wrapped her hand in his. It was all he’d wanted since he met her.
“He’s longed to live.” He finished.
The tent zipped brutishly zipped open and Tarma came spilling through, landing gracelessly on top of Huston. His lips cupped Huston’s eye socket while his hands groped at the minister’s knees. His arms were really too long.
Huston pushed him off, laughing to cover the discomfort. He looked back to Kit. Her eyes were burning with a soft intensity. She wanted him to come back.
He couldn’t. Not with Tarma splashing around.
“He became alive when they pressed ON.” Tarma said, sliding into his sleeping bag and worming his face closer to Huston’s. He’d been listening.
“You don’t think that.” Huston said for Kit’s benefit. Tarma didn’t deserve for her to believe his jokes were revealing. “He’s been alive in the sense that he functions as an intelligent being could, but intelligence isn’t passion. He’s longed for a human experience since our first days talking to each other.”
“I wouldn’t go throwing around ‘he’ like that.” Tarma said.
“Gangotra can be whatever sex Gangotra wants to be. It is whatever he, and I say he because he’s identified this way, feels himself to be.” Huston looked at Tarma. “And your experience with him is what it was... regardless of that.”
“I didn’t have an experience!” Tarma howled.
“So is he gay?” Kit asked.
“He’s been with women, too.” Tarma replied.
“He’s human. Humans have passion. Humans have intimacy and love. It doesn’t matter the sexes. What makes it special or rotten is a function of the two involved and whether they have feelings for each other.”
“Or the three involved. Or the four involved. Or the—“ Tarma began, cut off by Huston’s raised hand before the number reflected what really happened.
“I think Scott and Gangotra would be really sweet together.” Kit said.
“God, I hope it’s true.” Huston said in response.
“You said you think my sex is rotten?” Tarma asked.
Huston looked at him. The conversation had grown layers. He knew he was speaking now as both a minister and a man. He looked to Tarma. He could see from his friend’s eyes that he was shifting into a more thoughtful version of himself, despite the delivery.
“No.” He calmed himself, waiting for some clarity. “I think we have to think about what sex is as a behavior and what may have inspired cultural interpretations of the behavior. Promiscuous sex is wrong when one of the parties has feelings and the other doesn’t, which puts the imperative on the parties to be responsible and careful of the other’s feelings. Less than that would be rotten. The sex itself can be a soulful act of connection.” He paused again. “Heterosexual sex, gay sex, serious sex of lovers, promiscuous sex...as long as we’ve been in groups, the only real concern has been the collectivization of human energies in the same, constructive direction. When and where sex has become distracting, corrupted, or destructive, that is when it has been met with social or real consequences. It’s part of what Confucius spoke of in advocating for a Second Nature: something to drape over the animal at our instinctual core to guide personal and collective harmony.”
“And what’s more evocative of negative passions than the dark side of romantic feelings.? Yeah.” Tarma added. “Or feelings in general.”
“Yeah. Well, we are a long way from the rest of the humans. Hopefully our small group can be less fear-ridden and defensive in co-existing with each other’s sexuality.”
“And what is it when Gangotra does it? Do you think he actually feels?” Cooper said from outside the tent. Apparently he was listening, too.
“I don’t know. I haven’t been there. Sometimes it's probably for the sheer animal of it. In the past, in movies and shows covering the topic, bots have rebelled against their programming as sexual units. Maybe that never made sense. Maybe it makes more sense for Gangotra to want nothing more than to share in the most untethered of passionate human exchanges….So I imagine it's run the spectrum.” Huston replied. “Sex can be corruptive, a lot of things can be. It’s different for each of us. Everyone should discover what is corruptive for their souls. It takes a lot to see truth and light there. Sex may be more corruptive than anything else we have. But Gangotra is a loving being. As is Scott. Speaking only about them, I’d be proud of them both.”
They were all silent. Huston wasn’t sure who was awake and who not, but his own mind continued to circle, despite the physical exhaustion.
He inched himself closer to Kit. She was warm. She was peace. Gradually, his day ended, his eyes only opening again to watch Cooper come into the tent.
Sometime in the middle of the night Huston woke. Again. He’d fallen asleep on his back, but was turned toward Kit now. She was sleeping soundly. Getting up as quietly as he could, he opened the tent. Cooper peaked through heavy lids but closed his eyes when Huston showed him that he was bringing his pistol.
The deep of the night was much colder. He shivered and crossed his arms. Grabbing his boots and jacket, he zipped the tent closed and climbed the boulder behind their tent. It was an easy climb.
From the top, he could see the field even clearer than before. Many of the beasts were sleeping in a concentrated cluster. Several were awake, grazing as they walked in tight and medium circles around the cluster.
A pop of light in his periphery pulled his eyes to the left. The planet had fireflies. A few more popped to his right, but again he wasn’t able to turn his head fast enough. Suddenly one popped in his line of sight. He caught his breath. It wasn’t tiny fireflies. The lights were pulsating across the field, a half mile away. More flashed from the trees around the field.
Cavers.
He gripped the boulder tightly, scraping his fingernails against the rough surface and lowering his head.
“Up again?”
Huston gestured emphatically. Kit was at the bottom of the boulder looking up. She began climbing.
“Quiet, quiet.” He whispered.
She laid down on her belly next to him and squinted her eyes at the lights as they again climbed in frequency.
“Cavers.” He mouthed.
Her eyes widened in alarm.
The beasts had finally noticed the flickering and were bellowing to each other. The sleepers jumped to their feet.
The lights stopped.
Turning to leave the field, the beasts froze as dozens of the flashes strobed the trees flanking the herd. The Cavers had trapped them against a meadow.
Without more warning, dark figures silently exploded from the forest and through the grass.
Another salvo of lights from each side of the ambush, spears and large stones lit for a fraction of an instant.
The beasts lumbered as they were struck. One fell, and then another. The Cavers had concentrated their attack. Roaring with a fury that surprised Huston, several of the largest beasts sprinted in tandem at one end of the entrapment, the rest of the herd following closely behind. Many of the Cavers were smashed beneath their charge. In the panic of their lights, some could be seen jum
ping on top of beasts. Using their awesome strength alone, another few beasts fell.
One end of the Cavers’ circle sprinted to the side opposite the meadow. They were close to trapping the beasts against it. Suddenly, more dark figures emerged from the trees on either side. Several more beasts fell. Some of the Cavers were hurriedly attending to the bodies of fallen beasts in the field as those at the meadow began to mount another charge.
A tremendous sound cracked in the air above them as something huge rocketed toward the herd. Kit couldn’t stifle her scream. The ground may have shook as a crater of soil exploded around it's claws. Like lightning bolts, a frenzy of lights desperately joined the shrieks of Cavers pinned beneath the talons. Huston could see their fight as they fought to rise and were crashed back down. Sickening crackles carried to their ears as carapaces were impaled.
Great dark wings fanned out from the body above the talons. Stretching at least fifty feet from wing to wing, it cut the air with a sound that forced Kit and Huston to slam their hands against their ears. Looking back up, unable to say anything at all, Huston pushed he and Kit off the boulder as he caught the sight of a dozen more birds in a terrifyingly fast careen toward the Cavers, who were just beginning to run to help their comrades. Huston had pushed them toward the shortest fall, but the eight or nine feet were enough to shove the air from his body as he landed with a hollow thud. He’d managed to push Kit into a thick patch of bushes and grass. He’d seen her collapse, but her fall was much shorter than his and her legs had captured some of the momentum.
He crawled to his feet. The bird on the closest arch to them had continued to the field below.
“I’m sorry.” He gasped to Kit. “I didn’t know if it saw us.”
“I’m fine!” She called.
He winced.
Desperate screams terrorized their ears from below. Huston crawled to the tent. Cooper and Tarma were sprawled on the ground. Tarma was filming. Shutting his eyes with the pain, Huston staggered to his feet and collapsed next to them.
Still Human- Planet G Page 14
