Still Human- Planet G

by Jerry Underhill

  He tried to breathe deeply. Remembering the boulder-blocked entrance didn’t help.

  Eyes locked on the tendrils of bioluminescence crawling the cavern, he closed the gap with a dozen strides and raised his face to meet hers. He’d never paid much attention to their eyes: black marbles behind curled gray flesh. The Swarmers’ eyes were larger, presumably because bulbs hadn’t sapped developmental energy and because their roles required more time above-ground.

  He removed the mobile unit and adapter from his pants pocket, fumbling in the dark, and started the projection. It was a computer animated simulation.

  The graphics were good. The reaction was not.

  Flashes pulsated around him like strobe lights. He covered his eyes with his hand, trying to watch the ground for footsteps toward him.

  A dozen Cavers moved in to form a circle around him. Sheets of light shot from their heads to lattice together on the ground, building a three dimensional light image that rose as tall as he was. He turned off his hologram to see it better. It was Port Wallace, with large birds overhead. Bursts spewed from the beaks of the birds to explode in a cloud of fire below. Were those the drones?

  A high pitched grumble from somewhere behind him crept up his spine.

  What were they asking? Were they associating the drones with the raptors that fed off them?

  Scott’s demonstration may have been too effective. Without a way to help them understand what aircraft were, or that the drones meant the Cavers no specific harm, he felt the stirrings of frustration and confusion.

  He’d have to draw. He pulled his notebook from his jacket pocket. One of the Cavers moved his body in front of the Queen as he did so.

  Extending the notebook in what he hoped was a universal message of innocence, Huston slowly pulled it back after a few seconds and did his best to draw a Caver and human in a circle together. He’d never be able to communicate anything more complicated this way.

  Quickly, he turned the hologram back on. He held his drawing over it toward the Queen, hoping she’d understand the promise of peace even without a proper explanation for the drones. He needed a way to convey that they weren’t intending to bully the Cavers into submission.

  As he was considering it, the weight of the vague sense that his life, and others, might depend on this series of drawings growing heavier, one of the pregnant Cavers let out a piercing whistle and crawled through an opening behind her that Huston hadn’t known was there. The other women quickly followed, as did the Queen, without so much as a glance in his direction. Most of the guards rushed to defend the doorway.

  The one who’d carried him into the room emerged, grabbing him by the neck and dragging him out of the cavern. His knees scraping on the ground, Huston tried to get back to his feet, but was hastily pulled into an antechamber and shoved. He felt the ground fall from behind him and landed severely on his right side in ankle deep water.

  He spat and wiped his face. Standing, he tried jumping but couldn’t reach anything to hold onto with his good hand. Frantically, he felt for an escape. There was only stone. He was in a hole.

  There was enough space to walk several steps in each direction. But no light. He didn’t think he’d ever experienced less light.

  The cold water at his feet made the hellish pit a den of sightless, orientation-less chill.

  He’d always had a horrible fear of dark water.

  At first, the nightmarish chaos of screams from the caves above haunted him. His body twitched with each ghostly echo behind him.

  After several moments, they disappeared, leaving nothingness. Only the sound of his feet in the water and his quickening breaths.

  He soon lost sense of which direction he’d come from, and could only press his back against the rock, with no idea how long he remained there.

  At least nobody else was with him. The worst that could happen was that he died.

  He tried to jump out of the hole several more times. His hip was really hurting him, and his body was feeling extremely cold. The only thing about the freezing water that comforted him was the illusion that it might not be their latrine if it was so cold.

  It was a thin illusion.

  What had happened? He ran through it for what felt like hours. They’d separated him from those he was with, which was at least better than all the ugly that they could have been. They hadn’t been gentle with him, but that he lived was at least some sort of confirmation that they didn’t want to kill him.

  His hip was terribly painful. He was starting to think he’d done something else to his body.

  Each stabbing pain was a fresh reminder of his inadequacy. Of humanity’s inadequacy here. Three complex alien cultures they didn’t understand, raptors atop the regional food chain, dark caves, falls that broke body parts, fingers that couldn’t be pulled off necks.

  He sat down in the water. It was instantly soothing. But not as soothing as what he felt inside. There were a handful of times in his life when the deep-rooted buzz of spiritual connection was swept over by God’s touch, as if the rituals, measures, and focus developed as bridges to a connection were no longer relevant. It wasn’t a tidal force that was severely felt; just the soft embrace of a peace that leaves no cause for thought or question. Those were moments that fed the heart all it could ever need to hold on.

  The smile on his face crinkled tears in his eyes.

  He thought he understood why caves had been powerful focal points for religions in human history.

  This was where he’d wanted to go. These were aliens he wanted to know. This was where the path had taken him. The others felt safe. He felt peace with it.

  Resigning himself to a long wait, he rested his head back. A splash in the water jolted him upright. Scrambling to the side, he held his hand in front of him with the other against the wall still, hoping to feel whatever it was with his fingers. A powerful force lifted him by his shoulder, squeezing hard enough that Huston yelled in pain. He felt himself rising in the air and then the rush of wind as he was carried through the tunnels, finally being dropped again at the entrance to the Queen’s chamber, only recognized by the faint flow emanating through the opening.

  Huston tried to put weight on his right leg. Able to stay on his feet, he worked himself into the cavern beyond.

  Nothing could have prepared him for what he saw on the other side.

  The cavern was filled with hundreds of large Cavers, each crawling on it's belly over the tendrils of luminescent water or basking in the glowing pool at the cavern’s edge. Their backs were covered with golf-ball sized pox.

  Some were feeding on something... Heaps of something. Meat?

  He grimaced. His eyes finally made out enough to know. They were mauling bodies of Cavers. They might have been parts from Swarmers. He couldn’t know. He couldn’t look, let alone listen to the ripping, breaking, and slurping.

  Looking away, his eyes slowly grasped the shape of a white haze collected in front of the Queen. She was watching it intently, as were the members of her guard.

  Huston might’ve counted to 100 as he stood in the entrance. The Cavers stood still as well, not a single flash from their bulbs. The only movement was the crawling of the pox-ridden, weakly scrambling away from the haze and toward the darkened reaches of the cavern, where some continued to covertly suckle at soggy flesh.

  Komorebi.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  And Komorebi’s brother, or bodyguard, or son. Maybe a pupil. Huston still couldn’t tell.

  It was a grossly unsettling scene, made somehow more disturbing by the arrival of the Cloud leader, whose presence seemed unfitting here.

  Huston walked forward, nothing else seemed to make sense but to stand at the heart of what was happening here. And he’d obviously been summoned. Nothing attacked him, nothing moved, only the calm radiating from Komorebi’s essence joined the sound of his footsteps. The Cavers were still spellbound. Maybe they were more surprised than he was.

  Shuffling feet behind him caused th
e minister to whip around. His heart twisted as Kit’s pleading eyes met his. Next to her stood Tarma and Cooper, with an escort of four Cloud elites behind them and a gang of Cavers hunched menacingly at the entrance. The humans looked as horrified by the Clouds as they did the Cavers.

  He glanced back to the Queen. She stood still as stone. Maybe he hadn’t been the only one summoned. It was a good sign that none of them had been meaningfully harmed. There was a chance for diplomacy here, with both alien leaders.

  He gave his friends a smile that he hoped was reassuring. It did nothing for Cooper. Tarma looked at Huston with a confidence and trust that filled him with fear.

  Kit just closed her eyes.

  He sensed Komorebi’s attention as he neared him. In his mind, he saw a storm of wind and debris tearing a forest to pieces. It was so powerful that he threw his hands up in protection, disoriented and collapsing to a knee, the sense of it engulfing his will. But then it began to die, as if Komorebi recognized the effect, and a subtle breeze blew leaves across Huston’s imagination. It was leading him away from the danger.

  He felt again a sense of being read by Komorebi, and a bemused surprise that wasn’t his own. Warmth wrapped around his shoulders and the dizzying images disappeared.

  He stood, wobbly. A gentle wind blew through his mind once more. This time he felt it at his back. He listened, taking the last few steps with assurance.

  The soft splashes of Cavers jostling in the pool echoed about the room.

  The hologram was still projecting from his mobile unit. It’d been knocked over. As he stepped tentatively to Komorebi’s side, the pearly being vaporized a bit more. He was barely as dense as smoke from a fire.

  The Queen’s bulbs flashed spastically. None of the others joined, though many bent at the knees, as if coiling to strike.

  Was he communicating with her?

  Like a television turned on, the image of each of them— the Queen, Komorebi, Huston, and Scott—appeared in his mind, standing at the Treetop Village. The sun was high in the sky.

  Huston shook his head. The vision was less consuming than before, but still caught his breath. He felt feverish.

  Getting grips with herself, the Queen flashed complicated sequences to the other Cavers.

  The Cloud leader was calling for a council. It obviously wasn’t what the Queen had thought he was here for. She screamed a guttural sound that forced the humans to all wince and reflexively shield themselves.

  Lights plumed from the Caver guards. The area in front of him was filled with searing white. He stepped back from the heat. Layers of shocking white rose from the bottom of their projection, rolling through images of Clouds. The pearly beings dissipated. The entire cavern exploded with white. It filled every corner of the space. He couldn’t see.

  “Huston!” Kit yelled.

  He reached for his blade, not sure whether he was alive or dead. But slowly his vision came back. For the first time, he felt Komorebi’s protector. The fury surprised Huston. It turned to the entrance, where dozens of Cavers and Swarmers were filling the room; no longer quiet or docile.

  This was a threat.

  Huston looked to his friends in fear. If the Cavers attacked, how could he help them. How could they escape this place?

  But they were gone. The Cloud elites were too.

  He felt subdued. The feeling of collapsing into comfortable sleep. He saw a stream evacuating water from a swiftly filling pool. Looking to Komorebi, the sleepy feeling vanished.

  The Queen screeched again and two of her guards stepped forward to project an image at his feet. It was the birds, but then the colony’s drones, slightly misrepresented as having flapping wings, though unmistakable by their shape, smashed through the projection. Then it disappeared.

  The Queen wanted them to use their drones to destroy the birds? He wanted to be feel all of the excitement of the moment. He’d read legends from Native American lore of thunderbirds, and he’d enjoyed interpreting that as their chronicling of the arrival of aliens in Earth’s history. He hadn’t necessarily been serious. But here was an alien species interpreting humanity’s aircraft the only way they could.

  It wasn’t a moment for him to enjoy, though. There were real consequences here. His mind raced, feeling the weight of hundreds of hostile eyes. He wouldn’t agree to that. Not now. The Cavers and Clouds were at war. True neutrality was nearly impossible. One way or another they’d be seen as participating. They’d likely be embroiled in this.

  He did the only thing he could think of: he scrawled one of the worst drawings in the history of diplomacy on the screen of his mobile unit. His fingers shaking with adrenaline, he drew the three of them, at the Treetop Village, sun high in the sky.

  He hoped they understood. He was agreeing to the meeting. He circled the figures with a blue line. Holding the unit toward the Queen, then Komorebi, and back to the Queen again.

  She did nothing.

  Her guards did nothing.

  The fury in Komorebi’s protector burned.

  His body tensing for the worst, Huston turned back to the Queen. A flash from beside him was his only warning, though not with enough time to respond. The Cavers converged on Komorebi in near silence. Huston didn’t get to find out if there was even enough physical form in Komorebi to converge on. Their bodies were nearly horizontal in midair when they began spasming.

  Komorebi’s pupil was now as wispy as the leader was. Invisible electric fury was pulsating from his essence. The dozen Caver guards landed, writhing at Komorebi’s feet. Liquid bubbled from their necks and faces.

  It may have been blood. It was too dark to know. The younger being was killing them. It had happened so fast that the other Cavers were only just beginning to respond.

  Komorebi vanished, seemingly yanking his pupil’s body from space. It trickled into nothing.

  Huston was left alone. The mass of Cavers were snarling. With nothing left to respond to, one of the victims on the ground reached up to grip his leg violently as others rushed in.

  He was going to die. He was happy to find out he only felt peace at the end. Hard bodies crushed into him, and then there was nothing.

  It wasn’t the nothing he’d expected. This wasn’t the nothing of peace in itself. This was a nothing to be reckoned with. He’d tasted it before- the dissolution of self. With mystics all over Earth, he’d plunged into himself. Wandering the eternity within and between until the world had been born anew in his mind.

  He’d turned from it in fear each time. Afraid to lose himself. Afraid to lose his bonds. His family, his friends, his dogs, what were they and what was he if he accepted slipping into nothing and everything? Dissolving into the Sea of Infinite had felt as this did. It was too much. Part of him could always process the persistence of himself even as his soul spread like fruit juice poured into the ocean, but even that part tried too hard to come to terms with something the human brain could never really understand or discern. And so it was left to the mind and heart, which for him, even on the sliver of chance that it could mean his consciousness would be forever lost upon leaving this world, produced impenetrable mountains of fear and resistance.

  He knew better. But the recoil was swift. Suddenly he was splashing in freezing water. The dark night sky above nearly as black as whatever depths lay below the surface he tread above.

  He wasn’t wearing clothes.

  Still disoriented, he was losing the battle. He’d drown if he didn’t get to shore. The cold had jettisoned adrenaline throughout his body, so he rapidly gained some control and made it close enough to the bank that the tips of his toes could sink into mud. Coughing water, he wiped his face with his hands.

  He was at the lake where Scott had picked him up before. Demonous lightning cracked through the sky, and rain fell in sheets around him. He needed to do something smart and quick to help himself, the cold was unmanageable.

  Scanning the shape of the lake around him, he thought he knew where he was. And therefore, where the colony
must be. Soft orange light bloomed above the trees across the lake. Starting to jog, he stopped at the sight of a light breaching the bend of the river to the Cave entrance.

  “Hey!” He yelled, his voice sharp in his throat.

  They’d never hear him. Maybe he could hit the boat with a rock. Scrambling at his feet, his fingers closed around something the right size and weight. He stepped into his throw, but bailed on it at the last moment. The engine had shut off. He could hear arguing voices, even over the heavy rain.

  “Hey!” He yelled again. And again.

  Finally, the arguing stopped. A male voice yelled something back. It was Cooper.

  “Help!” Huston shouted.

  The boat roared to life, turning toward him and drifting to a stop in the shallows. Kit jumped off the boat and ran into his hug. She put her hands on his cheeks, beaming into his eyes. She looked as confused as he felt.

  “Thanks God, man.” Tarma said, jumping down, too. “We doing a Jungle Book thing?” He asked, eyeing Huston’s lack of clothing.

  “How’d you get here?” Cooper’s deep voice rang from the helm.

  The others helped Huston onto the back of the boat. Tarma handed him clothes from his pack.

  “I really don’t know. I was in the caves, then I was in the water.” Huston said, looking up from buttoning the pants. “Where the hell did you guys go?”

  “The ghosts walked us right out. No problems from the Cavers.”

  “We tried to stop,” Tarma looked apologetic. “but they basically carried us out.”

  “They felt….I don’t know.” Kit looked haunted.

  Huston looked at her. Describing them could be slippery, he knew.

  “We can’t reach the colony.” Cooper said, holding up a mobile unit. “They walked us to the boat. We came out here, planning to circle back to help you, but then couldn’t reach anyone.”

  “No one?” Huston tried to keep his voice even. Something felt wrong about that. “Let’s go back.”

  The others nodded. At the speed Cooper piloted the boat, it was only a few minutes before they bumped into the slip, hastily tied the boat off, and sprinted up the trail.