Space for Evolution

by Zurab Andguladze

  Immediately after this attack, the predator surfaced, perhaps wanting to know the result of its successful attempt. Due to the raft’s rotation caused by the animal’s attack, its head emerged from the water beside Ama.

  The young man realized that he wouldn’t have time to pick up the maser lying near his right foot. Instead, he instantly and instinctively decided to act similarly to the first person to use a club against his enemy, although no one had taught him this. Ama leaned back as far as possible, and then throwing his body forward, with all his might hit the animal with the ax in its upper jaw.

  The next moment, he heard the sharp sound of a broken bone. The beast, stunned by the pain, jerked its head and at the same time nearly pulled Ama into the water by the hilt of his instrument. The young man pulled the ax out of the wound of the animal in time and managed to stay on the raft. As soon as this happened, orange-colored blood flowed from the beast’s mouth and from its wound. The stunned creature had lost the ability to orientate itself, and meaninglessly spun in place.

  In his desperate throw, Ama had involuntarily pushed the maser with his foot back to Mafkona. The girl had already realized that the predator could no longer attack. She released the oarlock, grabbed the gun, took aim and shot at the beast. She’d wanted to get into its eye, but because of the pitching of the raft she struck another part of its body somewhere below its neck.

  Instantly, it became clear that she hadn’t spoiled anything with this poor aim. Three kilojoules of energy fired into the body of a living creature don’t disappear without a trace. No new injuries appeared on the body of the animal, as is usual when firing a microwave pulse, but the blood began to break out from its mouth much more abundantly.

  The water around the loudly gurgling animal lost its transparency and took on a diluted orange color. Finally, the beast swam away, accompanied by its bloody halo. The girl didn’t waste energy and didn’t fire any more. She saw that soon the life of the creature would end.

  The excited young people, soaking wet, were restoring their breath, and meanwhile, the current was carrying them farther and farther away from the rocky glade where they’d planned to moor.

  “We need to resume rowing,” Ama remembered first. “Are you ready?”

  “Sure,” the girl answered confidently. “It hit me on the leg and not on the arm. Moreover, now I almost feel no pain.”

  Ama was again surprised by the girl’s behavior. From their youth he’d perceived Mafkona as a somewhat distracted and tender girl. The other settlers shared this opinion, and had spoken about it at meetings, where, in the presence of the robots, they’d evaluated each other’s abilities. She really was a dexterous child, but a little tender and detached from everyday life.

  But right now, Ama realized that subconsciously he’d supplemented the girl’s tenderness with timidity, as if these traits couldn’t exist separately. Now he was trying to remember why he’d thought that Mafkona was fearful. He had to review only a couple of seconds of memories to come to the conclusion that he had never seen examples of her cowardice, and had never heard of such a case.

  Was she gentle and not as strong as the other boys and girls? Yes, she was, but it had nothing to do with courage. It should also be remembered that, being so slender, she ran faster than almost all the other girls, and was one of the best in maser shooting, although she was not so good at archery, due to her lack of physical strength.

  After the accident which had cost them a broken lens, the girl without hesitation had suggested correcting her mistake by joining the expedition. During their journey, she’d never lagged behind, and a minute ago, in a very threatening position, she’d kept the ability to think logically.

  The youth doubted if he would have dared to become bait for the beast or not. After a moment reflection, he decided that now there was no point in the question.

  “It is really interesting,” Mafkona recalled. From time to time, she was removing her right hand from the oar and massaging her thigh. “Why do such animals not live in the Quiet?”

  “Maybe those SRC-1s with their long teeth do not let them live there, and attack this animal in large flocks? Or maybe indeed, the water there is too cold for them?”Ama suggested.

  “Yes, who knows, maybe BRLC-1 can dwell here because of the geysers, although the small predators cannot be excluded, either.” Mafkona agreed with his hypothesis.

  Approaching the shore, they stopped talking and found themselves in a place of complete silence. A dense shrub that grew here blocked their view of the area, and could easily hide predators, if any. The girl jumped from the raft, knee-deep into the water, and immediately felt pain in her right leg above the knee, but said nothing to her comrade. Mafkona decided that she would tolerate it for a little and the pain would go away. Most likely it was an ordinary bruise.

  After Mafkona, Ama also stepped into the water. He leaned over and picked up a rather heavy stone from the bottom of the river. He looked at his fellow traveler, ready to shoot, and threw a stone into the nearest bush. Then he threw a few more stones, rounded by the water, in different directions. His activities didn’t cause any consequence, and seeing this, the travelers pulled the raft onto solid ground.

  After they’d placed the raft in the backpack, which Ama hung on his back, the scouts headed for their planned mooring site to delve into the forest from there. In the middle of this short march, from somewhere above, they heard a whistle. Having stopped and searched with their eyes, they found Omis at the top of the cliff and exchanged looks with him. After a few more minutes of careful walking along the riverbank, they reached the rocky clearing, partly fenced with large boulders and partly with thicket.

  While the young people were looking around, leaves rustled on the left to them and then an animal burst into this clearing, immediately followed by another creature. The first of these appeared to be an LH-1, and now it rushed away, chased by a beast half a meter in height with thick legs and a round head. It had already rolled up its clawed trunk, like a spring under its lower jaw.

  The LH-1 rushed directly toward the humans because the river and stones blocked its path in other directions. An instant later, when it saw the tall two-legged creatures, it turned without stopping and ran in the opposite direction, to the boulders, hoping to find a passage between them. The predator rushed after it.

  Soon, the LH-1 realized that it couldn’t pass through the boulders, and it had only one way left: to enter the river and swim around the stone barrier. The young people saw that the fugitive didn’t like this direction, that the animal was trying to avoid the water, but the approaching predator didn’t leave it another choice.

  It was about to attack when the LH-1 nevertheless jumped into the Warm and swam around a stone projecting eight or maybe ten meters into the river. The pursuer ran to the edge of the flow and hissed in disappointment, but didn’t follow its prey.

  “I think I know why it does not want to go into the water,” Mafkona said in a hushed voice.

  “You are right; it fears the BRLC-1. Let this new one be the LC-2,”Ama suggested.

  Their assumption was confirmed pretty quickly. The LH-1 had almost reached the edge of the rock when a giant head, already familiar to the travelers, appeared above the water and caught the herbivore. The predator dragged the fugitive into the depths of the river so quickly that it didn’t even have time to wheeze in the end.

  The LC-2, having lost its prey, looked around and noticed the two creatures standing near the bushes. Each of them was larger than it was, and, besides, there were two of them—yet the predator decided to try, because maybe these unknowns were timid herbivores and could be attacked.

  Ama leaned over and picked up a stone. His movement didn’t impress the LC-2 at all, because it wasn’t a terrestrial animal, like a dog, and therefore couldn’t know what this strange creature had in mind. The youth straightened up, raised his hand, and with all his might threw the stone at the approaching beast, while Mafkona stood still, with the maser re
ady in her hands.

  Ama demonstrated a tolerable accuracy—the stone hit the leg of the beast. This unexpected counterattack immediately dispelled the hopes of the carnivore; whistling in pain, it turned and ran, quickly disappearing among the plants.

  “If there are as many animals in this forest as there are here, next to the river, we are unlikely to get to the crystal field today,” Ama said pensively.

  Chapter 61

  In their childhood, the robots had explained to them why a human feels the sensation of being watched. Although the creature is invisible in ambush, nevertheless its eyes fall into our field of vision, and thus visual contact is established for a split second. Our consciousness can’t process this event, because of its short duration, just as it can’t distinguish one single frame when watching a movie. Nevertheless, since the image of the eyes of another creature has physically gotten on to our retina, the subconscious warns us about it.

  Therefore, Omis now knew for sure that he was being watched. He hoped to find out soon if it was a predator. The young man constantly looked around, going toward his goal. The confidence that he was being watched grew with each subsequent survey.

  Based on this, he made an unpleasant conclusion: a herbivore wouldn’t have followed him for so long. It would go its own way, seeing no danger to itself. Since this creature didn’t stop its surveillance, it must be a predator.

  Going to a plant surrounded by a small dell, Omis was eager to climb it and reach safety as soon as possible; even his palpitations urged him. He looked around again, holding the bowstring half-stretched.

  Within the surrounding vegetation, nothing moved; he didn’t see anything suspicious, yet he no longer trusted this calm, and listened to every rustle, noting every movement of the leaves. Standing still for some time, he again looked at the trunk of the big tree. He was relieved to see that he could easily jump up to its lowest branch.

  At first he’d thought to leave his belongings on the ground, as making his way through branches with them would be rather inconvenient, but changed his mind and took up his weapon with the intention of hanging it on one of the lower branches while he rose to the summit.

  He jumped up and grabbed the lowest horizontal branch. Then he tensed his abdominal muscles and raised his legs, while bending his arms. In the end of these movements, he found himself over this “crossbar.” During his somersault, when he’d hung upside down for a bit, all the arrows fell out of his quiver. He was upset that he hadn’t foreseen this; he knew he should have tightened the lace. Although he reassured himself, deciding that the arrows wouldn’t go anywhere and he would collect them after the descent.

  Omis hung his bow and the empty leather case on a thin branch and began that day’s second ascent. The plant turned out to really be huge. It towered over its neighbors by the height of two humans. The wind, unnoticeable on the ground, was rocking the top of this giant, deflecting it by at least a meter in each direction. Reaching the summit, Omis could barely restrain his desire to go down. The young man had never been at such a height. Because of his excitement and fear, he didn’t even endeavor to look anywhere; he simply lowered his eyes and tried to get used to the loftiness.

  “I cannot swing here endlessly,” he finally told himself out loud. “I have to hurry to call the rescuers. Mafkona and Ama need help."

  Gathering all his will, he overcame the fear and managed to glance at the expanse stretching beneath him. It so happened that he had appeared here facing Ro, peering in the opposite direction of the colony. Naturally, there were only endless orange waves of crowns there, nothing familiar.

  He began to carefully move around the top to look in the proper direction. To do this, he stepped on a branch that was growing above the one on which he stood. It bent fishily but still supported his weight. At the same time, it seemed to the young man that the top of the plant was now swinging even more widely, which made him hold his breath again.

  In his new position, Omis also needed a little time to adjust before he more or less relaxed and could calmly study the new view that opened to his gaze. Here he came across a ridge. The young man thought for a while, but almost immediately heaved a sigh of relief. He realized that he was seeing a mountain range, which they called the Distant. The settlers knew about it only from space photographs.

  Actually, only twenty kilometers separated it from the settlement, but so far they hadn’t been there. In the end, their task was to develop the territory around the colony, and not to travel even such short distances. So far, the ocean was the farthest place they had seen with their own eyes.

  Meanwhile, Omis was trying to estimate the distance to the mountains, and, after some thought, came to the conclusion that about a kilometer remained to reach it, at least certainly less than two. He also recalled an important circumstance: the ridge stretched precisely from north to south, to the very shore of the ocean.

  Swaying at the top of the plant, at a height of at least twenty meters, he looked out into the expanse, trying to more accurately determine his future route. It turned out that in a straight line, from his present location to the settlement there was a distance of twenty-one or twenty-two kilometers. Here he felt surprise, because he realized how far he had moved west. Now he remembered that before the trip they’d only specified the distance to the crystal deposit, but had not determined its azimuth. So now he didn’t know how far to the west of the settlement they’d come to reach the Warm.

  Omis glanced at Ro, floating across the sky toward the horizon, and continued to think. He realized that the maximum that he can do that day was to reach the ridge. There would be no rescue team. The young man sighed and, realizing that he had finished his business there, he began to descend. Having reached the lower branch, Omis meticulously examined the surroundings. During this survey he suddenly felt breathless. Behind one of the bushes, an unknown beast lurked, who was clearly waiting for Omis to descend from the plant.

  The young man pressed himself against the trunk and stopped moving. The creature struck him by its appearance.

  All the colonists, including Omis, were accustomed to perceiving any news calmly, taking as their example their only educators—the robots. But the strange animal still managed to discourage the young man by its appearance. It looked like a legless cow, but its body resembled a big snake’s, like those they’d seen in documentaries about Earth’s fauna. Actually this creature did have legs, but very short ones. The young man, first of all, felt relieved to note this fact. The owner of such legs, of course, couldn’t climb a tall plant.

  Pale yellow spots covered the gray hairless skin of the beast. Its round head resembled an elephant’s, and, as usual, a single horizontal eye glittered on its face. The open, toothless mouth resembled a human one, making the creature even more disgusting.

  The predator was hiding behind a bush, and clearly hadn’t taken into account that it was easily visible from above. Hearing the rustle of leaves, the beast raised its head and realized that it had been discovered. Its eye darted a couple of times along its gutter and, barely vibrating, stared at the man.

  Omis realized that now he knew who had followed him. Along with this understanding, to his surprise, he felt once again relieved. It turned out that once the source of danger had come out, it stopped being so scary.

  The beast wheezed and left its shelter, stepping out into the small shaded clearing adjacent to the giant plant. The animal menacingly shook a tail with a huge bone bulb at its end. In addition to the clawed trunk, it also had this as a weapon.

  Omis reached for the branch on which he had left his armament. Grabbing the quiver, he remembered in disappointment that it was empty. His arrows lay among the moss-like vegetation.

  The young man looked for the arrow farthest from the predator and thought about a simple way out: to jump down from the tree, run to the arrow, put it on the bowstring and shoot before the beast could attack. The plan had one weak point: he didn’t know how quickly the animal could move. Therefore, he
needed another plan. Omis examined the scattered arrows once again and saw that one of them lay under a neighboring tree. Perhaps it hadn’t just slipped out of the quiver, but he’d kicked it when making his somersault.

  This arrow prompted to him a new solution—the interwoven branches of the plants, which had previously prevented him from seeing Ro in the sky, could now help him.

  Omis, grasping this, again went upwards, first moving the bow to the middle of his back. Then he hung on one large branch, over a similar one of a neighboring plant. Next he kicked the trunk of his tree and began to swing. When he, acting as a pendulum, had gained enough kinetic energy, he unclenched his hands and jumped.

  He dropped with his shin first on the bough and involuntarily screeched in pain. He began to fall, his body spinning around the branch. Omis barely managed to grab a knot sticking out of the trunk of the new tree and stop himself. Otherwise, he would have fallen to the ground just in front of the predator, which was simply looking up at the man’s activities.

  Now the young man began to descend along the other plant, and when he’d again approached the lower branch, the predator finally budged, approaching the plant and stopping one step away from the very arrow which had led Omis to make such risky effort!

  The scout lost control of his emotions, at last. He left the space of common sense and roared in anger. Unintentionally, he was making another effort, albeit a weak one, to affect the animal. The creature, which never heard such a loud, deep, and sonorous roar, even was taken aback at first, but then quickly regained its mood and wheezed violently in response.