Space for Evolution

by Zurab Andguladze

  Now it was Mafkona’s turn to swim into a pool of thoughts, although she did not splash there for very long, and soon revealed what she found there: “Probably you are right. I just remembered the expression on your face when I decided to become bait for the predator. It seemed you really saw an alien, heh, an earthling!” Mafkona said the last words with a smile.

  Ama smiled, too. Now his black eyes glittered more than usual.

  Mafkona continued, “And now I also do not understand how I decided on doing that. It seems that from that moment on we really began to perceive each other in a new way, ceased to be as close and easily understood as before, and that may be the reason for our new sensations.”

  Ama opened his mouth. He wanted to say something quickly, but changed his mind. Instead, he first reasoned internally for some time, and only then announced his conclusion: “I think nothing special has happened to us. I believe the same thing happens to animals when they reach the age of reproduction. Do we know how they feel in that period? Maybe they feel exactly what you and I are feeling now?”

  Mafkona first looked at him doubtfully, and then nodded. “Indeed, who knows? It seems that we will find out the answers to these questions when the files that will instruct us in how to breed are opened to us.”

  The girl abruptly fell silent; apparently she had remembered where she was and in what condition. In the next second, Mafkona expressed in a tense, muffled voice what she had subconsciously long ago understood and considered, “From here on, you must go alone.”

  Ama, as if expecting this offer, agreed. “Yes, now you cannot walk.”

  “I will stay here in the tent,” Mafkona expressed her decision in a flat voice. “We have no other choice.”

  Ama didn’t see another way either. “You will be safe in the tent, hiding in it at the first sign of danger.”

  “Let us put up the tent by the lake. I will apply cold compresses to my wound; I can do nothing more. I hope it helps, and I will be ready to walk normally when you return,” Mafkona said, acquainting him with her intentions.

  As soon as they’d agreed on their strategy, the young people got up, slowly crossed the field and approached the mere. The same soft vegetation covered the flat bank of the natural reservoir. On the opposite side, bushes grew, approaching directly to the water. On the left flank, a forest edge adjoined the lake, leaving several meters of open space between itself and its mirror surface.

  They set up a tent a few steps from the pond, near the mouth of the creek that had brought them there. Then Ama went to the nearest tall plant to clarify his course from its top, to establish the angle between the direction to the next hill and the rays of Ro.

  While he was arranging his affairs, the girl, without wasting time, began to treat her wound. Sitting next to the creek, she scooped up water from it with her palm, because it was colder there than in the lake. Her thoughts returned to her recently-experienced sensations.

  Once upon a time, the young settlers had studied the characteristics and sources of feelings. They’d learned that emotions occur because the body, if it has a reason for it, increases the production of the corresponding hormones: adrenaline, oxytocin, testosterone, estrogen, and so on.

  Probably the recent physical contact with Ama had caused the production of one or several of those substances in an essentially large amount. But until that day Mafkona never felt the influence of those substances, and hadn’t heard any of her comrades telling her about it.

  This didn’t happen, even when they’d all reached puberty, and for the girls the biological cycles had begun a couple of years before. Therefore, touching or seeing each other naked had never been the cause of these emotions. Moreover, they’d done it from the very beginning, as though they were prehistoric people. They, as the robots had taught them, had never hidden their nakedness.

  She suggested that to increase the needed hormones in the blood, it was really necessary to see each other in a new way. It seemed that the mortal danger on the river had turned out to be sufficient novelty. Or maybe that was what their education had meant when it had said that their development, despite almost identical environmental conditions, might differ from how it happened on the home planet of their species.

  Suddenly, she heard a crackle. Mafkona didn’t even look, but she immediately activated her maser; in the blink of an eye, as soon as she’d glanced in the direction of the sound, the girl relaxed.

  “I was thinking, and did not notice when you came up to me,” explained Mafkona. “What is that for?” she asked, looking at a thick plant stem in the young man’s hand.

  Ama didn’t answer. Instead, he furtively glanced at her bare leg. A second later, he was surprised at his own behavior—since when had he needed to hide his look?

  “I noticed your gaze,” Mafkona told him. “And this is what I think about it: now we do not look at each other like before, like a brother and sister, but as a male and a female. Perhaps from today we will look at the rest of our comrades in the same way, but this will become clear only after our return to the colony.”

  The girl fell silent for a while, staring at a point. Then she also speechlessly nodded to her thoughts, raised her head, looked into the youth’s eyes and said, “It is time.”

  Hearing these words, Ama squatted and silently placed the stick beside the girl. Then he took the maser from her, put the ax-hammer into the rucksack and straightened again.

  “You can use it as a cudgel or as a support,” he explained.

  Mafkona nodded.

  The young man stood still for a few seconds, looking at the girl sitting by the stream. Then he looked at Ro, which already leaned toward the west. Finally he said, “I am leaving,” and left, without looking back.

  Chapter 64

  After the clash with the predator, Omis no longer felt that he was being shadowed. Nevertheless, he was advancing with utter care, and was constantly looking back. Time passed, and from the tops of the rough terrain that he was crossing, the upper part of the ridge began to appear above the trees.

  After another two or three hundred meters, the unevenness of the relief was no longer required to see the mountains, and now they constantly towered above the forest. Soon the traveler approached their foot and immediately understood that the ridge was insurmountable. It looked like a stone wall of gigantic height.

  At the same time, he rejected the idea of getting around it from the north. Although, as he’d seen from the top of the plant, this ridge lasted only a couple of kilometers in this direction, nevertheless it would be a waste of time and energy. He saw no reason to go to the settlement again through the forest, because once already he’d quickly gotten lost in it. Now he planned to march beside the ridge to the ocean, and then travel east along the coastline.

  While he surveyed the mountains, Ro drowned into the forest behind him. The ridge immediately darkened and only the tops of the rocks remained bright. The time had come to look for night time shelter.

  At first, Omis considered the possibility of returning, and spending the night in the forest high up in the branches of a plant. But he immediately remembered the monster, and decided that it was wrong to return to the thickets when it was already dark. The next choice was to find a cave or any other shelter among the rocks.

  With a quick step, the young man headed along the ridge in search of a suitable place. He noticed that large slabs of up to fifty meters in height and about a meter thick were adjacent to the main spine. Some of these slabs had a triangular form, and some looked trapezoid. They had vertical sides, or ones forming planes with various inclinations.

  Omis decided that these plates might be useful to him. He must climb one of them and see if he could safely spend the night there. The scout headed south—tomorrow he would have to go in that direction anyway. Nothing grew right at the foot of the mountains. Here a strip lay, covered with stones that had fallen from the ridge for an unknown number of centuries. In spite of this rocky path having an uneven surface, it was sti
ll easier for the young man to move along. After about ten minutes, Omis, in his opinion, had found a suitable plate, or rather its edge.

  It had quite a steep incline, almost verging beyond the point at which he believed he could climb it. He decided to start ascending without delay, as night had almost come already. He wanted to examine the top of the plate, and ascertain whether it really suited his purposes. He moved strongly, leaning forward, and sometimes helping himself with his hands, leaning them against his path like a four-legged animal.

  It took quite a long time to ascend the plane, which was about seventy meters long. By the time, the traveler had reached the top of the plate, only Seler remained in the sky. Fortunately, its light was sufficient to show that there was a small platform on which a person could be accommodated, even lying down. From here to the top of the mountain there remained another fifty or sixty meters. The other edge of this plate turned out to be vertical and, of course, couldn’t be climbed. Omis decided that he had found what he wanted.

  Now he wondered what to do. Could he just sit or lie on the bare stone all night, or did he need to somehow arrange the place? He decided to check it and he lay down on the rock. A few seconds later, especially after he’d tried to turn on his side, the young man realized that he couldn’t sleep on the bare stone. But without rest, he wouldn’t be ready for a long and dangerous trip the next day. Who knew what kind of beasts he would meet on the way to the colony? Omis realized that he had to go down and collect branches with leaves to make a more or less soft bed. There was no other way.

  Omis went down the same inclined path. Once down, and having prepared his bow, he carefully examined the surroundings as much as the light of Seler allowed him to. Not seeing anything suspicious, he moved away from the cliff step by step. Soon he’d left behind a rocky strip almost twenty meters wide and had entered the undergrowth.

  Omis tried to see something inside the forest, but achieved nothing. The dark thicket hid its contents like a night-black cave. Therefore, the scout simply froze periodically and listened. He never heard anything, and it forced on him a feeling of growing alarm, though he tried to calm himself, thinking that the neighborhood had ceased to make even the weakest sounds because of his presence there.

  He began actively breaking off branches from the nearest bush with one hand. In the other one he held the bow and an arrow. He clearly understood their uselessness if a predator attacked him right then and there; however, he thought it was still better than carrying them on his back.

  After some time, Omis examined the bunch of branches lying on the ground and decided that they were enough. They looked like a rather large haystack. He put the branches one on top of another so that they could be carried under his armpit.

  Ascending along the inclined plane, with a load in one hand and his weapon now on his back, turned out to not be an easy task. A couple of times the planet’s gravity defeated him and forced him to retreat a few steps.

  Nevertheless, after about twenty minutes, he found himself on the top of the plate, and freed himself from his load, throwing it onto the stone platform. After that the traveler first caught his breath, and then laid out the leaves and branches in the shape of a mattress. He had gotten about what he expected—a layer a few centimeters thick. Having finished this, he pondered on how to avoid a night attack. How could he arrange something like an alarm?

  After some thought, Omis found a method. He went down again and there, directly at the foot of the ridge, set to work. This time he didn’t need to approach the forest and, encouraged by this, he simply leaned his weapon against the rock. Omis began gathering relatively round stones and placing them in the hem of his shirt. Soon he was already doubting if he’d collected enough stones, when he heard a drawling wheeze.

  The traveler stiffened and gazed toward the woods. Nothing moved there. Nevertheless, it seemed to him that again an ominous silence had thickened among the plants. Omis was about to drop his stones and take up his weapons, but at the last second he changed his mind. He reached for his weapon indeed but without getting rid of his collection. The young man stepped back onto his sloping path and began to rise.

  During his ascent, Omis noted with satisfaction that the ability to climb plants and mountains provides a great advantage. Predators are almost unable to do this, at least as deftly as humans. He even began to surmise that the first people on their home planet had survived thanks to these skills; otherwise, where would they have been able to hide from predators? It was why the robots had so often forced them to climb tall plants in their childhood.

  Reaching a point three meters from his “bedroom,” the scout stopped at the place where the path had an even greater slope. He carefully laid out his stones in this area. According to his idea, if someone wanted to sneak up on him during the night, it would touch these stones and, as they rolled down and knocked against the rock, they would awaken Omis. He even kicked one of the stones with his foot and made sure that in the silence of the night, it would knock quite loudly.

  As soon as he had “turned on” the alarm, Omis, exhausted by walking for the whole day, as well as by climbing various rocks and plants, went to bed right away. But the young man immediately felt that the mat was very different from a mattress made from selected goose down, like the one on which he slept in his house. However, in his condition, even such a bed seemed acceptable to him. His famine also bothered him, but the only “food” that Omis had was a flask filled with water, which was to be his “supper.”

  For the first hour, the young man just relaxed and listened. After a hot day, the stones had accumulated a lot of heat, and lying on them even delighted him. There, below, the wheeze of animals just occasionally disturbed the silence. No one showed interest in Omis’s “fortress”; the beasts went about their affairs in the forest.

  The traveler tried to do everything possible to fall asleep to be in good shape the next day, but over time it became increasingly difficult for him. The plant litter, covering the stone with quite a thin layer even in the beginning, had now completely flattened out under his weight. The rock cooled down, and Omis’s sides began to freeze. In addition, his demanding hunger didn’t contribute to sedation, either. Such a rest only exhausted him instead of helping him to regain his strength.

  Omis turned frequently from side to side, but to no avail. A couple of times he even got up and sat on the edge of the plate, peering through the forest, but what could he see? Seler had already left the firmament, and darkness reigned supreme on this part of the planet Neia. Here, at a height, the breeze seemed especially cold, but the young man had nothing with which to light a fire; his glow plug, along with his other things, rested somewhere on the bottom of the river. Now he tried to warm himself by rubbing his forearms with his palms.

  Tired of sitting, Omis returned to his rude mattress. Sleep avoided him as before. He didn’t know how to entertain himself, and at that moment he remembered that before he, Mafkona and Ama had left on their journey, Hafa, with the words ‘just in case’, for some reason had put a piece of raw meat in his quiver. Now Omis wondered why she had done so; after all, it would simply rot.

  Although now it turned out that the meat might come in handy. Soon, on a fire, which he had kindled somehow, Omis was frying this piece of meat, pinned onto a stick. Also in his quiver he’d found a bunch of his beloved parsley. He didn’t have to wait long—the food was ready quickly.

  With a knife, which had also appeared at will, Omis cut off a piece of barbecue, put it in his mouth and prepared to enjoy the freshly broiled fragrant food. Instead, to his utter disappointment, he tasted wood. Then he bit off the greens and experienced the same taste.

  The young man began to chew hard, hoping to feel something, at least. The intensive working of his jaws gave him a result indeed, but not quite the one he wanted. Instead of finally feeling something pleasant, his eyes simply opened and he found that he was “eating” not meat and greens, but the collar of his shirt. The chewing of the cotton
fabric had caused this unpleasant taste.

  “At least I slept a bit,” he told himself, after he’d finally got rid of the images that he’d seen in his dream.

  To Omis’s surprise, it turned out that Ro had already risen so high from behind the ridge that it illuminated the tops of the trees in the west. The young man himself, remained in the shadow of the rock, and the rays of the day star weren’t falling on him, but nevertheless the long and unpleasant night had ended.

  Chapter 65

  Ama climbed yet another plant to learn his position. He was already accustomed both to the height and swaying peaks of trees. In spite of still correcting his course in timely fashion, on reaching the top of another plant, the traveler always noticed that his path had slightly deviated from a straight line between the hills.

  Now, once on the summit of a high plant, the young man first looked at Ro. He saw that the luminary had covered three quarters of its heavenly trail by now. Then Ama turned his gaze to the hill, towering above the orange sea. By the foot of it the crystal deposit waited for the scout. The traveler estimated a distance to it as three or maybe four kilometers. Then, comparing the positions of the hill and Ro, he decided that from now on he could simply follow the luminary, which would lead him precisely to his destination.

  Having found what he wanted, Ama climbed down, using the branches as a ladder. Once descended to the lowest bough, he took his backpack and maser, which, as usual he’d left behind before climbing. Then he first hung onto the same branch, and finally jumped down from the plant. Since he already knew the direction, Ama headed toward his goal without delay.