Orphan Tribe, Orphan Planet

by Jonathan Vick

  It sounded once more, louder and more distinct. Thurl recognized the sound. He had heard it many times when he was a child. It was not the narvai-ub. It was Sohjos!

  Thurl rolled in the mud and got to his feet. He raised his shield over his head and tucked his spear beneath his arm and, with the michau meat no longer dragging behind him, Thurl began running like a warrior toward the sound. He could feel the ground sloping further downward; could barely breathe through the thick warmth. He wondered how far he had already traveled under-ground, and what might be on the land above him. For all he knew, there were mountains above his head; or the sea; or terrain he would never know.

  His rapid clicking and grunting became more sporadic, replaced by huffing and gasping. As he ran, he feared he might suffocate in the heat. His throat choked with the warmth of the air. His eyes ran salty tears into his mouth. His muddy follicles drooped and pulled.

  The tunnel dropped down in front of him. Thurl lost his footing and slid down a wet, muddy embankment. He grunted when he hit the bottom, and the echoes that came back chilled the sweat off him.

  He was in a large chamber. The walls were thick, but not covered in snow or rocks or mud the way he expected. They had some other, less viscous gelatin holding them. The floor of the chamber was writhing with creatures; wet, segmented larvae twisting through the gel, working a directionless path through dozens of oval rocks. Not rocks; eggs. Thurl clicked and discovered a larvae breaking through a shell with its six paddled tentacles. In the center of the room was sort of nest - a dug-out pit the larvae seemed to be attracted toward.

  Thurl crawled to the edge of the pit, careful to stay clear of the writhing larvae. They were already large, most of them up to his waist where they lay. The eggs were taller than he was.

  He swallowed and grunted into the pit, waiting for echoes to tell him more. There were creatures inside: lutzwock and chunacat, trigon birds and michau, quet and omino and repivrow and hinx. Most of the creatures were already dead; just meat in a pit to feed the hungry larvae. Some were still alive, dazed and insane with panic and dread.

  Thurl hunted for his father, calling out to him. No answer came back. He sniffed the musk coming from the pit, hoping to smell the familiar odor of Sohjos. He could smell only rot and blood and fear.

  A few of the larvae had found their way into the pit, and their circular mouths were sinking into meat and flesh; the hard beaks within cleaving muscle from bone.

  Thurl shouted into the pit for his father. He heard a reply, but not from below.

  On the opposite side of the great cavern there was whoop, then a series of Racroft clicks.

  Thurl pushed back from the edge and worked his way toward the sounds.

  “Dad!” He kept shouting. “Is that you?”

  Finally, he was close enough to hear the reply.

  “Thurl, be careful! Stay quiet or the narvai-ub will return.”

  Thurl stopped shouting; even stopped clicking. He relied on guttural grunts to find his way between the tall eggs and the squirming larvae. The gelatinous floor beneath his feet was slow and thick; like wading through wet snow. The larvae were active, but not very fast, and they didn’t seem to notice him unless they brushed against him. Their paws flopped and slapped against the mud; claws scraped against the egg shells.

  Thurl could hear his father thumping his fist lightly against his own chest, the way he often did when he wanted soft, detailed echoes without making enough noise to attract predators. Thurl followed the sound of the thumping. He discovered his father inside the remains of a cracked open egg shell, a slightly larger shell piece pulled over the hole to close it.

  They didn’t speak to one another. They were afraid of attracting the adult narvai-ub. Thurl slowly moved aside the piece of the egg-shell and stepped inside with his father. Together, they closed the shell.

  The inside of the egg was still wet with a sticky membrane. It was cramped and hot and uncomfortable, but for the moment, they felt safe.

  Sohjos grabbed Thurl and wrapped his arms around him. He squeezed his son, and held him. Thurl couldn’t remember the last time his father had hugged him. He wasn’t sure he’d ever been hugged. Then, he felt tears on his shoulder. Sohjos was crying.

  Thurl put his arms around his father. He could feel the wounds on Sohjos back where the narvai-ub teeth had held him. Racroft flesh was thick and tough, but the narvai-ub had cut down deeply. There were lacerations everywhere; broken bones beneath; a sticky sheen of congealing blood. Sohjos was breathing quickly. He was badly injured; maybe fatally so. He wasn’t sure how much longer Sohjos could live, even undetected by the narvai-ub.

  “You need medicine,” Thurl whispered. “This warmth will suffocate us both if we don’t get back to the surface.”

  “Shh,” said Sohjos. “I was afraid I would never see you again.”

  Thurl didn’t know what to say. He searched for something, anything to whisper in response. In the end, silence was enough.

  For a long while, they simply held one another, listening to the sickening sounds of the narvai-ub larvae squirming through the mud, breaking bones with their teeth and beaks, chewing the flesh in the animal pit to a paste, then slurping the paste down their throats.

  Thurl and Sohjos were dripping with sweat. The larvae were likely too young to smell them, but an adult narvai-ub would be able to pick out the live smells from the dead ones. They were both breathing heavily in the hot, humid air. The moist membrane of the egg-shell was suffocating. Thurl could tell that his father was slipping in and out of consciousness.

  “We have to get out of here,” he whispered to his father. He wasn’t sure his father heard him. “We have to get you home and let the Healers tend to your wounds.”

  Sohjos exhaled a defeated laugh.

  “I can’t make it back up that tunnel, Thurl,” he said. “I don’t even know how deep we are. It would take days to get back, even if the narvai-ub didn’t catch us. I won’t live that long, I’m afraid.”

  “I’ll carry you,” whispered Thurl.

  “Then we’ll both die,” Sohjos said.

  “I don’t care. I’m getting you home, or I’ll die trying.”

  Sohjos began coughing, softly. There was blood and sputum drooling from his lips. The sweat pooled in the bottom of the egg.

  “I’ll find a way to get you home alive, father,” Thurl whispered as Sohjos fell unconscious again. “I’ll clear the tunnels of narvai-ub, and when it’s safe, I’ll get help to bring you home!”

  Quietly, Thurl kissed his father on the head, then moved the egg-shell aside and climbed out of the hatched egg. He closed the lid, picked up his spear and his shield, and grunted several times to get his bearings and location.

  He wanted to attract an adult narvai-ub; wanted to confront it directly; wanted to maim, to murder, to kill or be killed. There were many tunnels branching off the walls of the cavern. Rather than pick one and try to track an adult, Thurl decided to go after the easier prey. The anger and sadness overwhelmed him and Thurl went on a rampage, jabbing and slashing with his spear at a narvai-ub larvae as it rounded an egg-shell.

  The creatures were long and round; thick and tall. He didn’t know where to strike, so he plunged his spear into the soft, wet flesh just behind the row of tentacles where he believed a brain might be. The spear sunk into the pulpy larvae and pressed through. The larvae thrashed its tentacles, whipping at Thurl, but he kept his shield between them. He tried to remove the spear and thrust again, but the larvae was deeply impaled and the spear wouldn’t pull out. Then, the shrieks began.

  First, the speared larvae screamed – a piercing siren wail that echoed off the walls of the chamber like a screaming heart-beat. It writhed and squirmed on the end of his spear until Thurl was forced to let go or risk a broken arm. He stepped back, out of the way, crouching behind his shield. Then the other larvae picked up the warning.

  Thurl could feel the air currents in the room whipping around, disrupting the normal flow. He grun
ted and the image that came back was horrifying. Every narvai-ub larvae was flailing its tentacles; rolling in the mud and kicking its feet. And they were screaming; all of them. The siren shriek was so loud that Thurl closed his ears and could still hear it through the folds of flesh.

  Panicked, he ran. He had lost his spear, and had only his shield for defense. He wanted to run toward the exit; toward the tunnel he knew would take him back, but when the sonar sounds of the larvae revealed a room that had dozens of tunnels. He didn’t know which one was his.

  Thurl ran to the edge of the cavern, as far from the center pit as he could get. If an adult narvai-ub showed up to protect the larvae, he wanted to be able to hide in an egg-shell, like his father, or escape down a tunnel. He hoped with all the smells of rotting flesh and decaying meat in the room, the narvai-ub wouldn’t smell him. He found a carcass of some long-dead beast and rolled in the slimy, sinewy bones, trying to cover himself with the scent of something dead to mask his own musk.

  Suddenly, the air current shifted. A powerful blast of rancid air pushed through the chamber coming a tunnel on Thurl’s far left side. An adult narvai-ub was barreling toward the chamber, answering the distress call of the larvae.

  Thurl exhaled. He could feel his pulse race and the follicles on his flesh stand erect as his pores tightened. He wanted to take another breath, but the warm, moist air of the cavern swirled around his mouth, unwilling to draw down into his doomed lungs.

  He could smell the adult narvai-ub coming; a sickening stench. There was a thrumming rush of air as the creature hit open pockets in the pre-carved tunnels, forcing the air forward in varying strengths.

  Thurl needed to get to his father; to drag him to safety, or to hide inside the egg-shell with him.

  Before he could decide, before he could locate the broken egg holding his dad, the narvai-ub burst into the chamber. The larvae were still rolling and thrashing and shrieking their way toward the center pit. Thurl wanted to click, to grunt, to hum to get a more complete image of the chamber, of the adult narvai-ub, of his options. But his mind was blank. There were no images or impulses coming through. He was lost. He felt dizzy. He could feel himself falling, barely holding on to consciousness.

  “I can’t lose control,” he thought. “If I lose control I’m dead.”

  He fell backwards and squelched into the mud. He let his shield fall on top of himself, and tried to curl his body beneath it. If a covered trench could save Meisx from the ice storm, then maybe it could conceal him from the narvai-ub; at least long enough for him to find an escape.

  He held his breath and tried to slow his heartbeat. The noise was incredible: screams and wails and the roar of the adult. Thurl had no ability to determine what was happening. Even if he could identify each individual sound, he had no reference or training to know what it meant.

  Then, he felt something move beside him. It was larger than the larvae, but nothing compared to the immense size of the narvai-ub. It slapped rhythmically in the mud, like running footsteps crunching through the snow.

  Thurl opened the flap of skin covering one of his ears to get a better signal. He could hear something running; someone breathing; some heart beating. There was a grating, fast-repeating click, unlike anything Thurl had heard before. Then, he heard more creatures coming down the tunnel, passing him and going into the cavern where the narvai-ub was waiting. There were rapid clicks, and whoops only slightly dissimilar to the siren wail of the larvae. After a few minutes of hurried action, Thurl began to recognize the sounds.

  It was a hunt team!

  Somehow, the hunt team had found their way through a different set of tunnels and into the cavern to help him.

  Thurl pushed back his shield and rolled to his feet. He shot a few open-mouthed grunts into the cavern and let the echoes wash over him with clear information. He searched for Meisx and Gabal, sniffed for Lavis and Djinzon. He wanted to pull them aside and lead them to his father.

  What he discovered, instead, was that the hunt team was not Racroft.

  There were definitely creatures there, but they were much thinner; more smooth. Their follicles and whiskers we so short and fine, Thurl wasn’t certain he was detecting them at all. They walked on two legs, like Racroft, and held smaller shields and more complex weapons. And each of them emitted a scorching warmth. Thurl had never felt anything as hot. It was as if they were packed in warming rocks more effective than anything the village held.

  Thurl counted about six of the creatures but they were difficult to identify. They hunted in confusing ways.

  The narvai-ub was near the center of the cavern, protecting the larvae as they fell into the pit. The creatures stalked through the giant eggs, whooping and clicking rapidly. The adult narvai-ub clicked back, as if in response. But it was an angry, taunting series of clicks, almost like a growl instead of navigation.

  Two of the creatures rushed toward the narvai-ub, raising long spears vertically in front of them, with some sort of sinew stretched from one end to another. They tensed the sinew and placed another, shorter spear on the vine, then pulled back and let go. The short spear flew through the air with more speed and accuracy than Thurl had ever known a Racroft throw. The spears struck the narvai-ub above the row of tentacles. The beast clicked and roared and thrashed and screamed.

  As it turned to face the attackers, Thurl thought he sensed a party of four creatures dropping down into the far side of the pit.

  The narvai-ub lunged at the attackers, but they moved faster than Thurl could follow. He didn’t hear them communicating with grunts or clicks. He wasn’t sure how they were able to locate their prey, or how they were able to detect air currents movements so quickly.

  They leaped out of the way, hiding behind eggs at first, then darting down empty channels and popping up in different spots. They launched more short spears from the longer ones, striking the narvai-ub, waiting for it to turn its immense body toward them, before leaping out of the way and finding a new location for attack.

  Meanwhile, the four creatures in the pit were pulling out meat and loading them onto sleds.

  Finally, Thurl thought he understood the hunt. They were scavengers, like vutchels or hinx! They let the narvai-ub do the hunting for them, and then they distracted the beast while they stole enough meat to feed themselves.

  He ran forward a few steps to join them, or protect his father, or hide. Then he stopped, uncertain which way to go. There were still larvae squirming between the eggs. The shrieks and clicks and sounds of battle made it difficult for Thurl to get an accurate sense of the room. There were sounds coming from every directions, reverberating off too many surfaces, giving Thurl too much input and conflicting echoes. Everything in the room was moving too quickly.

  On the surface, in the cold, everything moved slower. The pace was more steady in the wind and the cold. There were distant mountains to catch the echoes, but nothing bounced off the walls the way it did underground. Even in their village cavern, the echoes came slower; paced and steady and calm.

  In the cavern, everything was fast; like time was running forward at a maddening pace. The air was too warm, the sounds echoed too often.

  The hunting creatures had adapted well. They were quick and sleek, crouching, stalking, leaping, running. Thurl could barely track their movements. They seemed to have a different form of communication, as if they could anticipate where things were before the air currents and sound waves had time to reach them.

  Thurl listened with amazement; catching echoes as quickly as he could. When he dreamed of being on the hunt team, this was how he imagined the hunts to be: fast and chaotic and dangerous and loud. He had been disappointed when he saw the truth; the slow stalk of helpless creatures. Down here, the hunt was exciting and dangerous!

  Thurl wondered if the hunting creatures were friendly; if they were another tribe of Racroft; an unknown tribe of outcasts or exiles, or Racroft lost on missions and teams. He wondered if he should make his presence known, or if they would
kill him where he stood as a threat or as food. They resembled Racroft, in a vague way. They stood about as tall. They had the same number of limbs, in the same locations. They were much thinner, with smoother skin and far fewer whiskers and follicles. Otherwise, they seemed to be the same.

  The Elders sometimes spoke of other Racroft who had broken away from the tribe, some who got lost and never returned. Thurl wondered how many other tribes there were; how many other caverns held villages. As far as he knew, they were alone on the planet. But Thurl didn’t know everything. And the planet seemed immense.

  Suddenly, one of the attackers tried to climb an egg to get a better shot at the narvai-ub. The egg shattered beneath her weight and the creature fell down into the broken shell. There was an audible thump, and a shout of surprise. The creature had found his father.

  Thurl could hear it happen like time had suddenly slowed. He felt the vibrations in the wind and the ground, deduced that the egg had broken and that Sohjos had been found. But mostly, he felt it in the pit of his stomach, on the sweat of his face, in the beat of his heart.

  Panicked and afraid, Thurl tried to plot a path through the chamber toward his father, but before he could decipher the conflicting echoes coming back, the creature had lifted Sohjos onto his shoulder and was tossing him on the sled with the meat.

  The sounds and smells swirled around Thurl at a pace so fast, Thurl thought he might go insane from the onslaught of information.

  There was a last shot of spears at the narvai-ub, and then a high pitched whistle. The creatures climbed out of the pit and they all gathered at the sleds. Faster than Thurl could follow, they were weaving their way between the eggs, back toward the tunnel where Thurl stood, paralyzed and confused.

  Thurl dropped back onto the ground and covered himself with his shield. The creatures stamped past him, dragging the heavily laden sleds behind; dragging Sohjos with them, away from Thurl, deeper into the tunnels.

  In the cavern, the narvai-ub was curling around the central pit, still howling a horrid wail and using its tentacles to scoop larvae into the pit to protect them.