Meanwhile, Omis regained his ability to think logically. After a little thought, he took off his shirt, broke a twig off of a branch next to him and put his already not-quite-white clothes on the end of it. He lowered the banner he’d obtained in this way so far that the creature could reach it with its trunk.
In this way, Omis wanted to know the capabilities of the animal, its quickness and method of attack. To his surprise, the beast, although still hissing viciously, instead of rushing to the bait, turned away and peered closely at the nearest bush, to its left, about fifteen steps away. Seeing this, the traveler also was interested, and turned his head to find out what had distracted the predator.
At this very moment, the animal took a step and swiftly waved its tail. The bone mace hit the stick just a few millimeters from Omis’s hand and hooked up in his shirt. The piece of fabric drew a high arc in the air and fell on the bushes on the border of the small clearing.
The young man flinched at the unexpectedness. He almost released the branch which he held in his other hand. The next moment, he realized that in general, the beast had done even more than he could have wished.
Omis came to this conclusion after he saw that the animal had run after the shirt, opening his way to the arrows. He jumped from the tree, rushed to the nearest one and laid it on his bowstring. Meanwhile, the predator had realized that the shirt was useless, turned around, saw that the man already stood on the ground, and headed back toward him.
In those few seconds, Omis had managed to estimate the situation. He’d decided that he didn’t need to rush back to the plant. The young man already understood that the predator ran much slower than it waved its tail.
When there were just five or six steps between them, Omis loosed. The arrow pierced the area where the left foreleg of the animal connected to its body. The creature produced a sound that resembled both a wheeze and a hiss. It stopped and tried to pull the arrow out of its body with its toothless mouth and proboscis, but failed.
The furious beast left its occupation and again rushed at Omis, but he had already left his former place. While the animal had fought the arrow, the young man had picked up another two arrows. He put one of them under his belt, and laid the other on his bowstring.
The eye of the predator fluctuated in its gutter feverishly, the beast becoming furious with pain, but, nevertheless it didn’t dare to attack headlong. Seemingly it had already understood what the threatening pose meant, of this unknown creature that didn’t run away from it like other animals did.
The beast just stood and hissed fiercely. Omis lowered his bow. The beast hissed even more furiously, but at the same time stepped back. The man lowered his weapon a little more. Blood dripped from the animal’s wound; the scout sensed a mixed, heavy smell of burnt plastic and feces. The predator took another step back and stopped. Omis didn’t like this delay; he again raised his bow and drew the bowstring.
Seeing that, the beast for some time peered at the human with its bright orange, vibrating eye, and then, apparently, it made its final choice. It tilted his head slightly toward the arrow in its body and retreated into the bushes.
Maybe it plans to attack me later? Omis thought, still caught up in the excitement caused by the battle that had just ended. Maybe this is its precise plan, but what can I do? I have only five arrows, and the colony is still very far away.
The traveler completed his inner soliloquy in solitude. The beast had disappeared into the thicket. He waited for a while, with the longbow at the ready in his hands. Then he quickly climbed the tree again and took his quiver from the branch. Next he collected the remaining arrows, fetched his shirt from the bush, put it on and walked carefully into the forest. At the last moment the young man remembered, and named the new animal the BLC-1, since it was the first land carnivore bigger than a human.
Chapter 62
At first, Ama and Mafkona felt an unpleasant stuffiness, but the further the travelers went into the thickets, the fresher the air became. The forest here looked denser, and the trees more branched. They were not naked but covered by a dark blue bark. The travelers scrutinized the unknown plants with curiosity; the abundance of vines surprised them especially. They wound around the larger plants, like a thumb-wide wire, and hung from them like a fringe, almost touching the ground and its fallen leaves. The latter, being dry, also had a dark brown color, like the leaves in the forest near the colony, but besides this, pale orange and blue stripes covered them.
So far, nothing hindered the researchers from moving forward. Gradually, they got a more and more solid impression that the forest was less populated than the riverbank, although perhaps the animals were trying to avoid unfamiliar creatures.
Unfortunately they didn’t accomplish their usual hiking pace. Over time, they encountered an obstacle that had looked like a minor inconvenience at first, but eventually became very significant. In the beginning, Mafkona almost didn’t pay attention to her bruise and effortlessly maintained Ama’s pace. But later, the greater the distance they left behind, the sharper the pain in her right leg became. It was as if someone were pressing a piece of hot metal against her thigh with ever-growing strength.
The girl often touched the sore spot and, without lifting her trouser leg and looking at the wound, felt that it was swelling. On the approach to the first hill, Mafkona could barely keep up with Ama. Only the periodic ascents of her companion up the trees for clarifying their course helped her. These stops gave her a chance to catch her breath, and during them her pain subsided a little.
At this point, a worried Mafkona was already thinking about what she should do if she really did have to stop somewhere in the middle of the forest and could not move on anymore. Meanwhile, they reached the foot of the first landmark, covered with dense forest.
Ama said without turning his head, “We have covered five kilometers; I wonder how long it took?”
Having said this, he turned around and finally noticed that the girl was lagging behind him, and moreover that she was limping. Of course, they’d covered a great distance since dawn, but, nevertheless, Mafkona looked especially tired, like they had been running all this time and never had a rest. Her clothes and hair were wet as if after rain, her face pale.
“Why are you limping?” He asked. “Is it because of the beast’s blow?”
“Yes, it seems that it hit me much more strongly than I thought,” the girl said sullenly, breathing heavily. “Then I did not feel such pain, and I was certain that it would pass soon, but it does not decrease, I feel it more and more sharply with every step, and my hip is swollen.”
With these words, she carefully rubbed the damaged spot on the front of her hip, showing the sore spot.
After a moment of reflection Ama suggested, “Let us make a halt and rest until your pain is gone. Rather, you rest, and I will climb this hill to clarify where the second landmark is.”
“Take the maser,” Mafkona said, handing him the weapon.
Ama hesitated: “What if something attacks you?”
“I think if I climb a plant, I will be safe,” the girl answered without hesitation.
Ama weighed her words and agreed, “That is correct. There are a lot of large plants around. I will help you get up one of them. We have never seen animals climbing trees, but still, if any tries to climb up to you, you can hit it with the ax. And I really need to take a maser.”
After that, they slowly neared one large tree. Here Ama squatted down, and the girl sat on his neck. Then the young man straightened up, and Mafkona reached for a branch at a height of about two and a half meters. She twined her hand around it began to pull herself up, and the young man helped this effort by pushing her healthy leg. Soon she sat comfortably on the bough and looked down at the young man who was already headed toward the hill, constantly inspecting his ambiance.
The girl was perched on an almost horizontal branch, leaning her back against the trunk. Time passed, but her companion didn’t appear. The girl no longer doubted that he
had left a very long time ago. During this period, he could have easily climbed to the hill’s top, seen the next hill and returned. Now Mafkona, without a break, was looking in the direction in which her comrade had disappeared.
For the first time in her life she realized how bad it was not to have a radio connection. They could neither find a course, nor talk with each other after they’d parted…She already felt worry about Ama.
Mafkona began to ponder another task. She considered how to find her companion, and tried to understand how difficult it would be for her to climb the hill. Soon afterwards, the girl lowered her healthy leg and began to stretch it down. She planned to hang on the branch where she now sat, and then jump off hoping to land on her healthy limb.
At that moment she heard a loud whistle. The girl tensed her arms, lifted herself back onto the bough, and looked around. She detected no one among the thickets. Mafkona thought for a while, and then realized what was happening. It was easy to climb a knoll towering above the vicinity, but after returning from there, it was quite a different matter to find just another ordinary plant in the forest. Because of this, Ama now couldn’t find the place where he’d left Mafkona.
At one time, despite all her efforts, she’d hardly learned to whistle without using her fingers. Girls generally found it much harder to acquire this technique. On the contrary, the boys had quickly mastered it, watching the corresponding lessons on the screen. The robots had required them to master this skill as a backup communication channel. So, the girl whistled in response, making an audio beacon for her comrade. In reply she heard two signals. The girl answered with the same amount of whistles.
Soon, Mafkona spotted her companion, although not where she expected to see him. When he’d left, the girl watched him while slightly turning her face to the left. Now, in order to accompany him with her gaze, she had to turn her head almost completely to the right.
“How easy it is to get lost without the UD,” Ama said thoughtfully, approaching the plant and looking up questioningly at Mafkona. “I wish I knew what is happening with Omis.”
For some time they silently pondered on that question and when they’d grasped that they couldn’t answer it, the travelers simply returned to their current task.
“I will help you to come down,” Ama said. He neared the plant and turned his back to it.
The girl first put her healthy leg on his shoulder, then gradually slipped along the trunk and sat on the young man’s neck. After that, he slowly squatted, and she slipped from his back onto a carpet of dried leaves. They sat under the tree and waited for Ama to rest. The hill wasn’t too high, but Ama had climbed it, and then came back rather swiftly.
“How are you?” he asked after about twenty minutes.
“I am ready,” the girl replied. “It seems the pain has passed.”
They rose and picked up their belongings. Mafkona, as before, took only a maser and threw its belt on her shoulder. Ama carried the backpack on his back, and the ax-hammer in his right hand. The scouts resumed their trip in their usual rhythm, but gradually their trip turned into short advancements between stops. They had more and more often to wait until the pain in the girl’s thigh subsided.
With time, Mafkona’s suffering intensified, and then the moment came after which she could no more step on her sore leg. To her surprise, she felt a reaction that her body had showed only in early childhood: tears periodically appeared in her eyes. Each time, Mafkona barely suppressed the manifestation of that useless phenomenon.
Meanwhile, the scouts approached a small ravine, with boulders around it and a brook curling at its bottom. With their eyes, they tracked its current and saw that the stream left the forest and flowed through a wide, brightly lit meadow not far from where they stood.
“Let us sit here. We have to find some kind of solution; it is pointless to continue our path if, essentially, you are unable to walk,” Ama said firmly. Now he walked constantly next to the girl, and he clearly saw the torment she was experiencing.
First, his companion was silent; then she wiped the sweat from her forehead with her palm and said brokenly, “Yes, we should think about it, but I do not want to sit here among the stones. Let us go to an open place.”
Ama nodded, and they slowly overcame the last few meters to the field. After leaving the forest, the wayfarers found themselves in an oval meadow about one hundred and fifty meters in length and sixty meters wide. A rug of orange plants completely covered it, and on its opposite side a small lake glittered. By eye, it occupied at least a quarter of the area.
The young people moved a little way away from the thickets, and collapsed onto the vegetation. Unlike terrestrial green grass, it didn’t grow in single stems, but in small branchy bushes without a hard trunk.
After they’d rested a bit, Ama unfastened the flask from his belt, then took another one from the girl and went to the stream. Meanwhile, Mafkona started to study her sore. The girl pulled up the right trouser-leg of her long shorts and examined the wound in detail. What she saw completely ruined her mood—a tumor the size of her fist had formed on her right thigh. Its top was dark blue, and everything else around it red. Touching it, Mafkona felt a fever.
How can it be healed during this stop? Ama should go on alone; there is no other solution, the girl concluded with disappointment.
Chapter 63
Meanwhile, Ama returned with the filled flasks. Seeing Mafkona’s occupation, he squatted down beside her and began to examine her swollen hip, too. The sight of the bruise discouraged him. The young man lifted his head, glanced anxiously at the girl, and then again looked down at her naked hip. After a slight hesitation, he carefully touched her wound. Rather, his large palm covered not only the swelling, but also the area of her leg adjacent to it.
At first, Ama was surprised by the heat of the sore spot, but almost immediately a strange trend began to grow in his body and his sensations. In addition to the heat, he felt something new, pleasant and exciting. Mafkona’s skin seemed to have completely changed; now it had morphed into an indescribably gentle and attractive one. The astonished young man felt that his heartbeat was magnified, as if from that moment on, with every contraction, it pumped twice as much blood as usual. This made the youth first look in amazement into Mafkona’s eyes, and then lower his look back to her bare leg.
Ama felt lost; he didn’t know how to react to this new sensation, and didn’t know what to do. With every second, his perplexity only grew. Now it seemed to him that the girl who sat next to him wasn’t Mafkona, with whom he had grown up and whom he had touched countless times. He realized that some strange but important change had just happened. In the end, Ama just removed his hand from her hip.
Mafkona also plunged into vagueness. She even forgot the pain and instead felt goose-bumps running down her skin. A new sensation made her heart tighten, her breathing quicken, and she felt her blood rushing to her face. In addition, notwithstanding that this situation was putting her into a state of euphoria, it also was warning her that something was wrong. The girl couldn’t understand what this warning meant.
Finally, she spoke with an uncertain smile on her face, “It seems to me that you are a stranger… as though I’m seeing you for the first time…um, and your touch is completely unusual, not similar to the ones before.”
The girl paused a little, and then resumed to reveal her sensations, this time expressing her thoughts more and more precisely, “This contact delighted me; it felt desirable and at the same time, for some reason which I have not yet comprehended, it felt prohibited… in short, it caused absolutely unintelligible and contradictory emotions. Did you feel the same, or not?”
“Yes,” Ama said hesitantly, as if also trying to understand this phenomenon during his speech. “It seemed to me that you are not the person whom I have known all my life. As if I touched you for the first time… and I wanted my hand to stay on your thigh. But, as you said, I also had an inexplicable feeling that this was wrong, and not because of your
wound.”
“Yes,” the girl agreed with him. “The realization of the fact that this strange feeling of anomaly was not associated with pain made me embarrassed, too.”
They fell silent, trying to adapt to a sudden, completely unknown situation. Then Mafkona spoke again, “What has happened to us? Why have we never experienced anything like this? Maybe the place is special, here?” She looked around as though searching for something peculiar in the clearing.
After thinking for a short while, Ama objected: “A place? What strangeness do you see here? Could there really be special plants or air here? No, the new environment does not generate such sensations. We have been in new places before; remember the ocean.”
The girl glanced at him and then shook her head in indecision.
Ama continued to ponder aloud, “Maybe we have felt all of this due to today’s events? Perhaps they have made us partially unfamiliar to each other?”
“Do you mean the fight?” The girl tried to guess.
He nodded, “Yes, until today I had no doubt that I knew you or any of our comrades well. It seemed we all were very likely to be able to predict each other’s behavior in different situations. But this morning, while crossing the river, I saw your completely unexpected demeanor.”
Ama stopped again, but Mafkona didn’t interfere in his speech, merely looking at him expectantly.
The young man was shaking his head, seemingly musing on how to express his feelings, or perhaps he was selecting words to better voice his thoughts. Finally, he proceeded with his consideration: “Until today you were considered a gentle and sometimes unfocused colonist… this is well known.”
Mafkona just nodded.
The young man continued, “But then, during the struggle with the beast, I realized that earlier I had unknowingly added cowardice to those traits of yours.”
Hearing this, Mafkona slightly tilted her head and now looked at him curiously. Ama had already spoken without hesitation, because he seemed to finally understand what he wanted to say, “But in the course of this battle I saw a completely different person—a fearless, cold-blooded, focused one… in short, a real stranger, whom I had never seen and never touched.”
Space for Evolution Page 29
